


These Hallowed Halls

by olivemartini



Series: The Audra Stanton Series [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Fred Weasley romance, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Freeform, Hinny, M/M, There's Some Death, Weasley twins, clemmy, fred weasley love story, ronmione
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2019-08-11 11:20:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 39,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16474571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivemartini/pseuds/olivemartini
Summary: They tell her that she doesn't have to fight anymore.And it's a nice thought, really, after what she had done.  All the people she hurt, the promises she broke, everyone that she couldn't save.  But Audra knows it's not true.  The Dark Lord doesn't care if you're trying to walk away from the fight.  He's going to come for you anyways.Now that Dumbledore's gone, the stakes are higher than ever.  And it's not just Fred that Audra has to worry about protecting- she and Emmeline are expected to fight against each other, no one's heard from Clary for months, and Harry's officially ready to bring his ragtag army of student soldiers into battle, which means that no matter what the Order tells her, Audra's job isn't done just yet.(Part 3 of the Aura Stanton Series)





	1. Chapter 1

The gnomes seem to hate her.

She isn't sure why. They like everyone else that lives in the Burrow, even Ron, but every time they see her coming they hide, huddling down in their little hovels and crouching underneath pumpkin leaves. Which is a shame, really, because out of everyone, she's the least likely to throw them over the hedges.

"Ouch." It hurts, but she doesn't swear, because Audra never was quite able to shake off all the lectures Mrs. Weasley gave them when they were kids. All she does is stare at the little beads of blood welling up on the back of her knuckles, and then glare down at the tiny gnome staring at her from the center of the bush. "What was that for?" There's no answer, just a blinking of its muddy eyes. "I was trimming the leaves, not you."

 _Maybe it didn't have anything to do with that,_ she thinks, even though she wasn't supposed to have those thoughts, even though Hermione had sat her down and they had come up with a plan on how to make them stop coming. She was supposed to snap a rubber band to her wrist every time she thought as herself as bad or evil or poisonous, and then from there, it would be a sort of classical conditioning to make her stop thinking it. And it was a good idea, in theory, except for the fact that Audra sort of liked the pain. But she didn't tell Hermione that part. As far as everyone else knows, it's working, but on the inside, she's still left with this- thinking that garden gnomes are somehow able to sense guilt. (According to Luna, they can.).

"Is she right?" She taps the pruning shears on the ground, not close enough to hit the gnome but certainly close enough to startle it. It stumbles and topples backward over a misplaced root, and doesn't get back up. "You can tell that I'm guilty? Know all the things I've done?"

It doesn't answer. Audra really wasn't expecting to, but at this point, she wouldn't be surprised. She might even have welcomed it. It'd be nice, to have someone look at her and let her know for sure how much blood is on her hands and how much really was just the price she had to pay for the greater good.

"Talking to yourself?" It's Ron. She didn't know that he was there, but she didn't jump, either. Part of Audra is still putting on a show, still wearing the mask and afraid to let something slip. The girl with the mask knows that she can't afford to show fear. Audra's not quite sure how to convince that girl to let go, just a little. "That's the first sign you know."

"First sign of what?"

"Don't know. Just an expression, ain't it?" Ron settles down beside her, and even though his eyes flicker over the blood smeared over the knuckles, he doesn't ask about it. Probably afraid to know the answer. There were times that, at the beginning of the summer, she would just go out into the woods and scream, punch and kick the trees until her knuckles were broken and bleeding. It was always at the edge of the clearing where the tree house used to stand. She's not sure why she always goes there- maybe because she assumes that Fred would be able to guess where she was, or maybe because it's living proof of what she could do. "You alright?"

"Course I'm alright."

"Alright people don't hide out in the garden all day." He reaches out to her and then thinks better of it. "You can come talk to us, you know. We've all done things. Been through things."

"Not like this." Which is the thing. These people around her are good people, which means that they have never thought of the things that she knows that she can do, have never even dreamed of crossing the lines that she has. They would find another way, or they would lose. Audra didn't even hesitate. "Not like me."

"I have." There's a look on his face that makes her believe him. Not because he's being kind, or earnest, but because he's got an ugly look, a scared look. The kind that comes when you've done something wrong and don't think you can ever talk about it, because other people won't understand. Maybe, if Audra was a better person, she would ask about it. But she's not that kind of person anymore. "I'll understand."

"No." He nods, long and slow, and Audra reaches out to grab hold of his hand. "Listen." He looks at her, and she can see the cut still broke open on his lip, the aftermath of his transfiguration of the ghoul. It hadn't been a pretty job. Fred had told her later that he had to leave the room twice to get sick, and George once, but Ron had stayed the whole time. _Stronger than every one of us,_ Fred had said, shaking his head, _and he doesn't even know it._ "I know that Fred said you had to take care of me."

"He didn't-,"

"He did." She knew that he did, and knew that Ron was going to protect her for as long as he can, even from herself. And she knew he would have done it even if Fred hadn't asked him to, the same was that Fred would have protected Hermione. "And that's okay. I appreciate it. But you can't rush this, or me. I can take care of myself." She squeezed his hand and tried for a smile, even though all her smiles looked just a bit too thin, a bit too worn. "Promise."

"You can. But you aren't."  He's eyes are a bit too sad, a bit too understanding.  The expression on his face now was more like Ginny than any of his other siblings.  "You wouldn't hide out here all night if you were."

Audra laughed, and then dug her fingers down in the dirt.  It was past dusk, late enough that the only light she had to see by the was the bit of Hermione's fire trapped in a mason jar, but she wasn't going to go inside anytime soon.  It had been Mrs. Weasley's idea to take up a hobby, and Audra decide on taming the garden- in the morning as the sun rises and the dew still coated the petals, all day while the sun burns the back of her neck, even at night when her fingers went numb with the cold. 

"Fine.  But I'm trying."  They were all watching her, she knew.  All worried about her.  All of them waiting for the day where she _stopped_ trying.  "Isn't that good enough?"

"Not yet."  Ron smiled at her, and when he stuck out his hand to help her to her feet, Audra took it, even though she knew it would be a few more hours of hard work before she was exhausted enough to sleep.  "But it will be."  
  


 

 

It'd been a long summer.

 _"What do you mean, trial?"  George was standing in front of her, the tops of his cheeks burning red, but Fred was just sitting beside her, gripping her hand with his jaw clenched.  Audra had warned him that this might happen, and had warned him that he wasn't allowed to try and stop it._ I deserve this, _she had told him, but maybe_ I need this.  I need to pay penance _was what she really meant._

_"She broke rules."  Bill was tired.  He'd been tired since the night Dumbledore died.  The cuts wrapping his body didn't heal easy, and it took him an immense amount of effort just to rise to his feet.  Fleur had gotten incredibly good at reading his thoughts before he acts on them, and most of the time, she can be seen right by his side, a shoulder to lean on if he ever starts to stumble.  Audra isn't sure how she ever thought of this woman as weak.  "She crossed lines.  She killed people that didn't need to be killed."_

_"I did what I had to."  How many times was she going to have to say it?  How many more times before they believe her?  Before she starts to believe it?   "I needed to keep my cover."_

_"So you could be that last line of defense, right."  He was so angry.  Angry at her, at the war, at the death eaters, but mostly her, maybe because hers was the last face he had seen before Fenrir started to tear him apart.  Maybe because he had known that she was the last line of defense, but not for someone like him.  "And how that'd work out?"_

_"I was just doing what Dumbledore told me to do."  She was on the verge of tears, has been ever since Emmeline dragged her out of that dungeon.  If Audra had to choose, in the middle of an Order meeting wasn't where she would want them to fall.  "I was only following orders."_

_"I've told you before what I thought of that."  He did, in the back of an alley, right before she burned centuries of memories to the ground.  Right before she killed one of the truly innocent people that got caught up in this war.  "But you didn't listen that time, either."_

_"Please," She said, and weeks later Audra still thinks it was that one syllable that did it, that that pain was the only thing that saved her.  "I'm sorry."_

A long summer, where she took walks circling the yard around the Burrow and learned all the different names of the plants in the garden, both the English and Latin.  She'd never been good at Herbology but now she learns, leafing through the pages of old textbooks with cracked spines that Mrs. Weasley found crammed into a closet, and she can't help thinking that Emmeline would have been proud of her.

_"They found this.  It was on the ground.  There was nothing else, but..."  Audra was on the old tire swing out behind the lake, the one that she and Fred and George had strung up when they were thirteen.  They had pushed her too high and she had fallen, once, broke her arm.  She had never seen the twins at such a loss for what to do.  "It was on the ground."_

_They had sent Remus to tell her.  She's not sure why it's always him when there's bad news to be told.  Maybe it's because he's got such a face for it- scarred hands, kind eyes, the crinkles in the skin that come from years of smile or worry._

_It's Clary's ring.  Audra wanted to tell him that he was wrong, say that there was no way that Clary would have kept wearing this, not after what Emmeline had done to her.  Not after she had had it proven to her time and time again that the person who shared the matching ring wasn't worth her time.  But Audra knew that she had.  Kept it, that is.  Clary's loyal to a fault._

_"There wasn't a body."  Audra finished the sentence that he didn't want to.  "But that doesn't mean anything."_

They turned Barty Crouch into a bone, _she wants to say, but doesn't have to, because they are all haunted by the same possibilities, the same ghosts._ Stuffed him underneath Hagrid's pumpkin patch.

_"No."  He sat down on the ground, his back to the tree and doesn't say anything else, just waits for her to come to him, his open palm letting the ring glare up at her.  "This might mean nothing at all.  She's very good at hiding, your friend."_

_"The best," Audra said, and then she took the ring and slipped it into her finger, lined up with the ring that Emmeline used to wear._

It's a summer of lessons.  Where she learns how to make cinnamon rolls the muggle way.  Where Ginny teaches her to braid hair like a champ.  Where she learns how much work goes into planning a wedding.  And also where she learns that, even after all this time, she still isn't willing to let go of the twins.  Not really.

_"Audra."  He was behind her.  Audra hadn't expected anyone to be home, but being caught doesn't mean she was stopping- she kept packing until his hand on her wrist forces her to stop, the last bundle of clothes falling haphazardly into her bag.  "Where are you going to go?"_

_"George."  She's got her eyes closed because she doesn't want to look at him.  Doesn't want to see how tired he is, how much he doesn't want her to go.  Or maybe how much he does.  Neither of them have forgotten that day in the woods with Draco, the things they were willing to do to him, to each other.  Their only saving grace was that it was all in the name of saving Fred.  "Don't."_

_"Just tell me."  He lets her go and then flops onto the bare mattress.  She had stolen the sheets.  "You going to leave a note?"  He doesn't break eye contact.  "Or how bout, in all the times that you've been planning to run away, in how many scenarios did you bother to say good bye?  Because I think we deserve that."  A pause, and a correction.  "He deserves that."_

_"You know I can't stay here.  Your family.  Your brother."  She had bit her lip so hard that it was bleeding.  "I'm putting them all in danger."_

_"Right."  There was a flicker of a smile on his face, and it makes her want to punch him.  "Because it's not like harboring Voldemort's most wanted is going to put us on the hit list."_

_He's talking about Harry, not her, but it's such a scary thought that Audra still starts to cry.  It's the first time since she had to shove Clary out of her own apartment, and it makes her double over onto the ground.  There's only a second before George is kneeling beside her, wrapping an arm around her shaking shoulders._

_"Hey."  His voice is softer than she'd ever heard it, and it makes her want to shove him away.  She does not deserve gentle.  "We'll figure it out, alright?  All of this.  And we'll make it out of this war together, I promise."  He reaches out and pulls the bag off the bed, dumps the contents out onto the floor, and even in the moment, Audra can tell that she had packed too sporadically to make it very far.  Most of it consisted of Fred's sweaters.   "Just stay, alright?"_

And she had.  Stayed, that is.

So it was a long summer.  A hard summer.  A bad summer.  But also a summer full of the last few days that she was ever going to have, and maybe part of her knows it, which is why she doesn't run away, even when she wants to.  
  
  


 

 

"I want to see you."  Fred's voice is garbled, fighting to be heard through all the static and over the noise of the traffic outside, but it's enough for Audra.  "Can't believe we have to wait another week."

"I know."  She gripped the phone tighter, pressed it against her ear like that might bring her closer.  Hermione had seen her do that once and spent twenty minutes informing her that there was a volume button on the side of the phone if it needed to be louder.  Audra didn't have the heart to tell her why she was really doing it.  "But we have to keep up routine.  You know the rules."

"The Order's rules."  He was grumbling, which means that George isn't there.  Both the twins are optimistic to a fault when they're around each other, because they both know how sad and anxious the other is.  "I say screw it."

Audra laughs, because that sounds more like the two of them than what she was suggesting.  And it's because it sounds so much like the two of them that she leaves him with a warning instead of making a joke in return.  "You know we can't do that."  She walks further away from the house, just in case Molly was listening through the window.  Molly tends to break into tears at any mention of the war, or her children's involvement in it.  "They're watching us."

She's holding onto a burner phone.  Hermione and Audra go out and buy three of them a week, and three times a week Fred sneaks out into muggle London and ducks into a random pay phone.  It's a different one each time, and each week is different days, and each day there are different times.  If someone's watching, they might have an idea of who he's calling, but never when.  And none of them had ever cared enough about muggle technology to figure out how to find her.

 _That's their fatal flaw,_ Dumbledore had told her, during one of those long nights where she brewed him antidotes for his hand only to be inevitably disappointed at their lack of effectiveness.  _To underestimate those who are different than us.  To think their weakness makes them somehow lesser._

She had learned so many things from him, and that was one of them, so when the charmed parchment failed them, Audra had come up with this as a form of communication- on the weeks where he can't garuntee a visit, he would call.  And after each call, she would give him the number for her next phone, and she would spend the next few days in a fog waiting for it to ring.

"You know what this is, right?"  He's joking again.  Happy.  Purposefully taking her mind of the Order and back to pretending that things were okay.  She likes the conversations best when they're able to pretend that they're going to get  a happy ending, and both he and George know it.  For the most part they play along.  "This is karma.  Payback for me not visiting my mother more often."

That was another part of the Order's rules for the two of them- Audra couldn't live at his flat, and Fred wasn't allowed to move back home.  He was allowed to come home just as often as he had before Dumbledore died and Audra double crossed the death eaters, no more, no less.  Audra supposes they should just count themselves lucky he was such a good son.

"It's enough."  They've only got another two minutes.  Audra never knows what to say.  "I'll take you any way I can get you."

He laughs into the phone, and then the voice cuts in, warning him that he's going to need to put in more quarters if he wants more time.

"Do you have more?"  They were out of the allotted time.  This was what the Order gives them, and after everything that Audra had done, she should be grateful.  And yet.  "We could go over, just this one time."

"No.  I'm all out."  Liar.  He never was as good at that as she was.  Audra doesn't think that's something that she can be proud of.  "I'll see you soon, okay?  Don't worry."  She doesn't answer, too afraid that she's going to start crying if she tries to talk.  "I love you, you know that, right?"

It makes her want to ask him if something is wrong, but she already knows the answer: it's all wrong. Everything is wrong.  If things were right, she wouldn't be standing ankle deep in a mud puddle at the edge of a cornfield while he tries to operate a pay phone.  But this is what they get.

"Yeah."  She's not going to cry.  She never used to cry.  And anyways, Audra's so damn tired of crying.  "Love you too."


	2. Chapter 2

Once, on one of the last few good days that they had together, she and Emmeline and Clary talked about weddings.

"You'll have to do dual maid of honors for yours," Clary had said, and Audra had laughed, because that was back before Dumbledore had ordered her to make her choices based on _the greater good_ and she still believed in happy endings.  "There's no way you'll be able to choose between us."

"Maybe I'll just surprise everyone by picking Ginny instead and demote the two of you down to plain old bridesmaids."  They were all by the lake, hidden back behind the boulders so Umbridge wouldn't be able to see them from her window and call the Inquisitorial Squad to haul them into detention.  Her hand was still stinging from the last one, she remembered. 

"You wouldn't dare," Clary said, at the same time Emmeline started in with, "Just because she's his sister," and Audra remembered not even questioning the implication that she and Fred would be one of the ones that actually made it, even though by that point she had had plenty of proof that the things don't always turn out the way you expect them to.  That they rarely ever do.

"And what about the two of you?"  Audra kicked out at Emmeline's shins, hard, and Emmeline kicked back, which hurt more than expected because of high heeled boots.  "Which one do I get to go with?"

"Both of us," Clary had said, before Emmeline could sputter out something awkward and offensive.  "Which means you'll have to do double the work- two days of shopping for dresses, two bridal showers, two bachelorette parties," and Audra had laughed again, promising them both that she would plan the best wedding ever while they both assured her they wouldn't be angry when she cracked under pressure.  

She didn't know then that that was going to be the last good day.  She just knew that those were her two best friends, and it made sense, to think that they were all going to get her happy ever after.  And she really, really did think that they were going to get to have those futures that the three of them kept promising her each other.

But you know what?

They didn't. 

"Hey."  Ginny nudged her shoulder, bringing her back to the present, which in this case was standing in the middle of Madam Malkin's while Fleur turned away bridesmaid dress after bridesmaid dress, claiming that they clashed with Ginny's hair or weren't flattering enough, what with those broad quidditch shoulders of hers.  "You alright?"

"Yeah."  She wasn't even sure what she was doing here, only that she was, and she was expected to be supportive.  To say _you look beautiful_ and _he'll love you no matter what_ and _that one is it, I think that's the one_ even though she honestly couldn't tell on dress apart from all the others.  It was just that Fleur had told her she was coming and Audra had owed her, so she said yes.  "Everything's fine."

Ginny didn't look convinced.  Not that it would take much for her to find problems with today's outing, considering all the issues she has with Fleur.  The relationship between the two of them has gotten better ever since Ginny watched her nurse her favorite brother back to health, but still, there was some lingering dislike.  _I know that she loves him.  And I know that he loves her.  So I probably should just get over it. But Merlin,_ Ginny had said, when the first comment about her broad shoulders was told to the entire store.  _Does she have to be so rediculous about everything?_

Audra didn't think she was rediculous.  She thought that she was beautiful, which caused her to either be overlooked or given the wrong kind of attention, and that she was strong, which made people scared.  All she knew was that over the past few weeks, Fleur had been her fiercest defender while she tried to convince the Order that she really was only doing what she had to, even when the person she needed defending from was Fleur's fiancé.  That made her loyal.  Which is why Audra wasn't going to ruin this by showing how upset she was about her best friends continued absence.

"I know that it's pretty," Fleur was saying, pushing Madam Malkin's hands away from her waist, sending the pins and needles scattering across the shop floor.  "I don't want pretty.  I want _perfect._ I want _mind blowing."_

"Fleur."  Ginny looked ready to strangle her.  This was the twelfth dress that she had tried on.  Audra doesn't think Ginny would try on this many dresses even if it was for her own wedding.  "Honestly, I don't care about how I look this much."

"Funny," Fleur said, rounding on her so fast that Madam Malkin was caught off balance, clearly ready to unleash weeks worth of frustration over one comment, and Audra stood up to intervene.

All in all, maybe it was a good thing that the window exploded when it did.

 

 

Audra's ashamed to say that it took her a moment to realize what had happened.  One second she was preparing to reign Ginny back in, and the next she was on the floor, covered in glass with her ears ringing.

Someone ( _Ginny,_ her mind supplied, when the curtain of red hair fell down onto her arms, _this is Ginny, you know her, she needs you to get up_ ) but she still couldn't hear her, and anyways, she was still a bit too confused, a bit too concerned with the blood on her hands and the glass digging into her skin.

"-got to get up, Audra, come on, come on, please please please get up."  Ginny was crying.  Audra's not entirely sure she had ever seen her cry before.  "We have to move, they're coming, they're coming back, you need to-,"

Audra never finds out what she needs her to do, because there's another blast, this one strong enough to send the two girls blasting apart.  Ginny was thrown across the room into another rack of clothes, and Audra had just enough time to throw a shield spell over her head to stop the ceiling from caving in on her.

"Ginny!"  She had to crawl to her.  Dimly, she recognized the fact that both Ginny and Fleur's dresses were ruined and that they were going to have to pay for them anyways, which wasn't possible in the budget that Fleur and Bill had.  Turns out that Fleur was going to get that hand made dress from Mrs. Weasley after all.  "Ginny, are you alright?"

"Yeah."   Audra couldn't tell if she was hurt, and Ginny would never tell her if she was.  "Where's Fleur?"

"I don't..." She hadn't even thought of her yet, it had all happened so fast.  There were no spells being sent from the back of the shop, which meant either Fleur and Madam Malkin were hiding or they were taken out of the fight entirely.  Audra guessed it was probably the latter.  Fleur didn't seem the type of the girl to back down, regardless of the situation.  "I don't know.  You go find her, alright?  I'll cover you."

"How?"  Ginny said, and then she was yanking Audra back down to the floor.  "Don't.  Don't go."  She really was crying.  Audra didn't know if she was hurt or just that afraid.  " _Please,_ don't leave me."

"I have to."  Audra knelt back down beside her, wondering when she would ever get the chance to do what needed to be done without feeling guilty about it.  Or, more selfishly, when she would ever get the chance to be the one who doesn't have to make the decisions for everyone else.  "Just get to floor, okay?  Stay close to the ground, and get to Fleur."

"They'll hurt you."  Ginny was holding her wrist so tight that it hurt, or maybe that was just from the fall.  "They're here for you."

"No."  Audra rebelled against the thought, because she didn't want to get them in danger, but also because she had already considered that option and tossed it aside.  There was no reason for anyone to have expected her to come with them.  This wasn't about her.  This was about Ginny and Fleur- or more accurately, about Harry.  Always, always about Harry.  "They're here for you.  Which is why you need to get to the back, set up some sort of defense, and wait with Fleur until I come back to you."

"And if you don't come back?"  Ginny demanded, still not letting go.  "What then?"

Audra didn't have an answer.  Dumbledore was always good at answering those kinds of questions, spouting off things about _the greater good_ and other false assurances, but Audra had decided when he died that that's not the kind of life she wants to lead anymore.  She doesn't want to leave the people she loves feeling like they never knew her at all. 

"I'm going to."  Ginny was still clinging to her.  It's been a long time since Audra was in this position- since that night in the Ministry, at least, where Ginny and Luna were trying to drag her away but al Aura could think of was her brother, how she buried Vance under a mountain of glass and the ghosts of prophecies yet to pass.  She wasn't strong enough to do what needed to be done back then.  But she was now.  "I'm going to be back here, alright?  I promise.  Do you hear me Ginny?"  She doesn't know that Audra's promises don't mean anything.  She still trusts her, enough that when Audra grabs her by the back of the neck and shakes her, just a tiny bit, that it actually calms her.  "I promise."

"This isn't your fight,"  Ginny says, half a plea and half an accusation.  "This one doesn't have to be on you."

 _Yes,_ Audra thinks, _it does,_ but there are no words for that, only another explosion down the road and another round of screams.  She doesn't say anything, but Ginny sees it in her face, loosens her grip just enough for Aura to slip free.

"You promised,"  Ginny warns, pushing herself further back into the mountain of robes that have fallen around her, her wand held out in front of her.  "Don't forget your promises."

 

 

The thing is, Aura doesn't forget.

Not any of them, not the ones she broke and not the ones she kept, and certainly not the people that got caught in her storm as collateral damage.  

Which is maybe why she does things like this, where she bursts through the shattered ruins of Madam Malkin's shop window and lands in a crouch in the middle of the terrorism torn street, just asking for a fight.  She has sins to pay for.  Blood to wash off her hands.  And promises that she still intends to keep.

Fred and George are there, too, standing in their disgustingly maroon work robes.  "Audra."  Fred catches at her elbow and Audra has to fight the urge to shake him off, to make him get out of her way, just so she can make it faster to the fight.  "What happened?"

She shakes her head, spits out a mouthful of blood onto the pavement.  They don't have time for this.  She can hear the echoes of the explosions coming from down the street, and knows that if they make it to Knockturn Alley, they'll be gone.  The ministry couldn't find a way to make Borgin get rid of the other half of the vanishing cabinet, and Borgin still owes a few very dangerous people some rather large favors.  

"We were in Malkin's.  Dress shopping."  There's another scream, and she catches sight of another burst of flame.  They're throwing Molotov cocktails into the shop windows as they pass.  Audra had been the one to teach them how to do that.  It seems like there's some aspects of muggle culture that they deemed fit to keep.  "Ginny and Fleur are still inside."

"Are they hurt?"  George didn't wait for an answer, just pushed past her, but Fred kept holding on to her like she might be able to fix this just from force of will.  Like after everything he's heard about the things she had done, he still thinks that he can look to her for the answers.  "Are they okay?"

"Ginny was fine when I left.  I couldn't see Fleur."  There's another explosion.  "Fred,"

"I know.  You have to go."  He doesn't ask her to stay, just kisses her and then pushes her away.  Fred turns away before she can and runs into the shop.  Aura doesn't bother asking him to come with her.   They don't make choices for each other anymore, and she won't ask him to choose between her and Ginny.  "Be safe."

 _You too,_ she wants to say.  Audra almost shouts it out after his back but bites down on the words.  That sounds like weakness.  That paints a target on both of their backs.

 _I will,_ is what she settles with instead, because the biggest difference between the old Audra and this one is that she finds herself hoping that she's able to make it back home.

 

 

"Hey!"  She got one of them.  He's lying face down in a puddle in front of Gringotts.  Audra hoped that the trolls that guard the door might have gone to keep him from drowning, but she suspects not.  "Why don't you pick on someone your own size?"

Most of them run, even though they shouldn't have.  She's not sure what their orders are, but Audra is fairly confident that the Dark Lord wants her back, dead or alive.  Preferably alive, probably.  At the last Order meeting, Mad-Eye had told her that she was important enough that Voldemort probably wants to kill her himself, like that should be some sort of compliment.

One of them doesn't.  

Audra wishes she had.

"Come on."  Audra doesn't want to make the first move.  She keeps her wand at her side, but it's not where it should be- not in position, not where she'd be able to reflect the spell as easily as normal.  "Haven't we gone through this before?"

"What can I say?"  Emmeline grins, holding her wand in one hand and the last Molotov cocktail in the other, dangling so close to the edge of her fingers that Audra expects it to fall to the ground at any moment.  "I'm the designated sacrificial lamb."

"Still being punished for old mistakes?"  Emmeline sends a spell and Audra deflects it.  It comes so close that she can feel the heat of it blistering on her skin.  "I can relate."

"You?  Dumbledore's golden child?"

It's like the old days, where they would fight just to show which one of them was better.  Only not at all like the good days, because in this case, one of them was expected to hurt the other.  Neither of them are supposed to walk away from this.

"Maybe you've forgotten, but Dumbledore's dead.  And the rest of the Order don't take kindly to murder, no matter how good you thought your reasons were."  There are people running towards them.  Ministry officials apparatting in the street to do damage control.  They're running out of time.  "Go."  When Emmeline didn't move, Aura stuck her wand in her pocket.  "Get out of here before I change my mind."

"You don't owe me."  She was backing up, but not fast enough.  "What I did out on the grounds, that wasn't for you.  That was for Clary.  Because I _owed_ you.  We're even now."

"This isn't about being even.  This is about being friends.  Remember when we were friends?"  Audra stepped forward, and even without the wand, the motion was enough to make Emmeline flinched.  She pressed her half of the promise rings down into her palm before letting go of her hand.  "You never meant to be the good guy.  But I did.  And that means not hurting you."

"You wouldn't hurt me."  Emmeline whispered, and it was too much, to have to play at this charade.  "Not for real.  Not when you couldn't fix it later."

"You getting caught is something I can't fix."  Audra stepped back.  She's always the one to let go first.  " _Go._ "

She leaves.  For a second, there's a flicker in her eyes that makes Audra think that she's going to ask her to come to.  That they can run away together, like they had talked about so long go.  But then the footsteps get too loud to ignore and she has to run, hauling herself over the grated fence and disappearing down Knockturn Ally.

"You let her go."  It's not an order member, and it's not someone from the ministry.  It's Fred, which is somehow worse.  "You had her, and-,"

"And I let her go."  

"Why?"

He didn't get it.  He wouldn't get it, even if she tried to explain.  These people, the good guys, they see things in black and white when it's really made up of shades of gray.

"Because she's my best friend.  And I love her."  Audra tries to take hold of his hand but Fred pulls away.  It's not much, just a little shift, but it's enough to make her drop her arm away.  "You understand that, don't you?"

"No," He says, and Audra knows that no matter how many times he promises that there s no need for her to search for forgiveness, no matter how often he tells her that he believes her when she says that she had only done what she needed to, no matter how many times he tells her he loves her, there's always going to be a small part of the two of them that wonders how much of what he is telling her is a lie.  "I don't."

"Then can you trust me?"  This time, he lets her take hold of his hand.  "Nothing else.  Just trust."

"Always."  He tilts his head down so their foreheads can be pressed together, and it feels like she won even though there was never any competition.  Audra's not sure she knows how to stop fighting, in any context.   "About anything."

"Then it's our secret, okay, Fred?  I just couldn't hurt her."  He understands.  He will understand, as this war keeps going and he makes more choices that he never thought he would even have to think about.  Audra never thought that she would consider that a good thing.  "You know I couldn't hurt her."

"I know," he says, but Audra can still hear it, that unspoken question of _then why are you always so ready to hurt me?_

She doesn't have an answer.

She doesn't think she ever will.

 


	3. Fight Club

It's not a decision.

Not really.

It's just that she's bored.  Bored, and angry, and the people from the Order are still treating her with kid gloves, either because they didn't understand her mission and still didn't trust her, or because they understood all too well what she had to do to stay alive and was watching for the moment where she would finally break down.  Audra doesn't like feeling like she's constantly under a microscope.  She likes it even less when she's passed over for a mission that she's clearly the most qualified for.

"It's not an insult," He had said, when she was fresh out of the meeting and seething.  The rest of the Order was still in the Burrow, milling about in the living room and enjoying what was left of Molly's family dinner, so she had been forced out into the night air.  Audra had ran all the way to where the tree house used to stand, and by the time Fred caught up to her, she was already sitting with her back against one of the trees, cradling the splintered skin of her right hand in her lap.  He doesn't bother to try and heal her.  He knows from past experience that she wouldn't let him.  She likes when the outside matches the inside, all raw and scabbed over and angry.  "They're trying to protect you."

"I don't need protecting.  I think I've proven that."  It's not enough, and she's still angry, and wants to take it out on someone, so she takes it out on Fred.  "You're glad that I'm being benched, aren't you?"

He was.  She knew that he was.  Audra used to feel that exact same mix of guilt and relief every time that Molly would tell the twins that they weren't old enough, or Snape would gripe about the Weasley children not pulling their weight. 

"Am I glad that my girlfriend isn't running straight at the people who want to kill her?"  He pulls her to her feet, tugs her forward until she is cradled against his chest.  Her hand is caught between them, the fabric of his shirt too harsh against her shredded skin, and Audra pretend that that's the only reason why she wants to push away.  "Yes, I am."  He let's her go, and then it's only two kids in the middle of an empty forest, looking a little too lost and a little too lonely than any teenagers had the right to be.  "And I think that when you've managed to calm down, so will you."

"Why on earth would I be grateful for that?"

"The Order needed people with a level head.  You aren't that person."  She tries to turn away but he grabs her by the arm, yanks her back.  It's the roughest he's ever been with her, and Audra stares at him until he drops his hand.  "Level headed people don't let bad guys go just because they used to be friends."

 _Best friends,_ Audra wants to argue, because he doesn't get it and won't get it but she wants to at least try and make him understand. _More than best friends, more than sisters.  You don't get to walk away after we've gone through the things that we had.  After we did what we did.  You stick together after that._

"I let her go because she saved my life."

"Which she only did because you saved Clary's."  Fred shakes his head, looking like he wants to reach out to her again but is too afraid she'll yank her arm away.  "You need to think things through, Audra."

"I am."  She protested because it was what she did now, not because she thought that she was right.  It's just what they did now, where even on the good days (and there were good days left, she was surprised to find, days where she didn't have to doubt once that they were going to get their happily ever after) all she could do was fight against him.  They always were two different types of people.  It just took the war to show them how different.  "I was."

"It doesn't matter."  He pulls her close again, smoothes his hand down over her hair.  She can hear him shushing her, like a lullaby, over and over and over until she doesn't feel so angry anymore.   "Let's just go home, okay?"  He loves her so much, she thinks, when he pulls back just enough to press a kiss to her forehead and leads her back towards the Burrow without waiting for an answer.  "It'll all be better in the morning."

It's the sort of answer that he gets from Molly.  Audra had heard her offer the same advice thousands of times _-nothing that a cup of tea can't fix, you'll feel brand new after a nice hot shower, get a good night of rest and it won't look so terrible_.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but this time Fred seems intent to see it through, because after a tense and whispered conversation by the door with George, Fred throws his jacket back onto the coat rack and announces that he's spending the night.

"It's fine," he had said, when Molly had fussed and Arthur had frowned.  "People spend the night at their parents house all the time.  There's nothing odd about it."

 _But we aren't people,_ Audra wants to say.  It's the thing she's been trying to make him understand since their sixth year when Harry announced that Voldemort was back.  _Not regular people._

But she doesn't say that.  She doesn't say that because they have so few moments like this, and because she doesn't want to make him angry.  She just turns and walks back to bed, knowing that he would follow, because if there's one thing in her life that Audra is certain she can count on, it's that Fred will always, always follow her when she needs him to.

"Just sleep," He had told her, when he laid down beside her and she stayed quiet for a moment too long, too afraid that anything she might say could come out wrong and ruin the moment.  "It's just for tonight, Audra."  He's not touching her, not really, just his fingertips pressing down onto her hip, but it's enough.  It's all that she can stand.  "I'll still be here in the morning."

She had tried to listen, but an hour went by, then two and three, and she still wasn't asleep.  She was just thinking, thinking about the Order not trusting her and not being able to really fight back against the people who want to hurt her because they're too damn concerned with the _rules,_ like there are really rules when it comes to fighting for your life, sitting there and listening to the moans of the ghoul that had been transfigured to look like Ron and listening to the creaking underneath that meant Molly was still awake and the sound of Fred's breathing, and she had the oddest sensation of being stuck, of being stifled, and she didn't want it, didn't like it, didn't know when her life started to look like this, so she left.

 _Just for a bit of air,_ she had told herself, slipping out from under the covers and closing the door behind her fast enough that it doesn't creak, but then she was walking out into the cornfields and apparatting to a dirty corner of an alley tucked into Muggle London, tapping her wand on the squeaky wheel of a dumpster so disgusting that not even the most desperate of muggles would come near it, and then she was eye to eye with the goblin who was acting as the doorman for the night.

"Ms. Stanton."  He was so startled that he knocked over his pot of ink and the scarlet spread all over the parchment where he had been painstakingly keeping track of the bets.  Audra tapped her wand on the table and cleared it, but he didn't say thank you.  "I didn't expect to see you here."

"Just came to watch."  But she could do more.  She was dressed for it, right down to her fingerless gloves that Emmeline had bought her.  "No dueling for me tonight."

"No."  He looked too excited to see her here.  He would tip off people that she had visited, she was sure, and be paid handsomely for it.  But not tonight, not when there were bets to be made.  "I imagine that would draw too much attention, wouldn't it?"

She deosn't answer.  Doesn't really haven't to, not when he knows that he's right, and she pushes inside to lurk at the back of the crowd, so far into the darkness that she can barely make out the faces of the people fighting.

It's amazing, how much she had missed it.  The crowd, the cheers, the fight.  Audra had always found it strange how many people lined up just to be beaten down into the dirt, but she gets the attraction now.  The need for pain.  The need for a distraction.  It would be so easy, so simple, to climb back into that ring and take back what was hers, just for one night.  Just to remind herself what she could do.

And more importantly, to remind everyone else.

"Imagine meeting you here."  She's already got her wand in hand, but the man forces it back to her side.  Audra recognized the growl in his voice the moment he spoke.  Mad-Eye.  "Let's move, Stanton."

She listens.  Not because she wants to but because she really doesn't have anything better to do, and that, more than anything else, has been what guides her decisions.  There's no actual wanting involved, in this or anything else.  It's like she thinks that if she keeps going through the motions eventually one of them might feel real again.

He waits for her to speak first.

"I was just watching.  That's it."  She wasn't part of the Order anymore, not really, so she didn't need to explain herself to him, but the words pushed their way out into the air anyways.  "I just needed to get out for a bit."

"Let me ask you a question, Stanton.  Do you think I was joking when I said that the Dark Lord wanted to kill you himself?  Think he isn't angry enough to have people watching every single one of these dives that you used to go to?  Think it's going to be a clean death when he finally gets to you?  Because make no mistake, Stanton," His electric blue eye was spinning, whirring from side to side as he scanned the alleyway.  "He's going to get you, and it won't be quick.  He's going to draw it out.  He's going to want it to _hurt_."

 _I'm not afraid of him,_ she wants to say, wants it to be defiant, but what comes out is "I don't mind the pain" and that means something just a little bit different.

"I know you don't, girl."  He looks sad, but he also looks like a soldier prepared to do whatever it takes.  He's one of the few people who hadn't looked at her like she was evil or broken.  Audra doesn't think she can say that anymore.  "But you've got a life.  A _gift._ You've got a boy who loves you, one whose going to wake up alone in a few hours, and I didn't take you as the type to throw it all the away."

"I wasn't trying to."  She was blinking back tears.  "I just wanted to be able to breathe again."

Dumbledore would have had something to say.  Molly would have given her a hug.  Sirius could have acted like he understood the impulse.  Mad-Eye could have done any of those things, but he doesn't, just stands and stares until another wizard stumbles his way down to the dumpster.

"Go home, Stanton."  He lets go of her jacket and the lack of pressure almost makes her stumble.  "I'm not going to ask again."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so I know I said that I would update every Sunday and as it turned out I'm actually a huge liar, but FINALS ARE OVER and I actually had time to write, so I'm back.

She's getting tired of Order meetings.

It's terrible, really, to think that she's reached a point in her life where taking part in a rebellious organization would become mundane.  That she would have to jerk herself awake when they read off guard watch duty lists and her thoughts would wander during moments of silence of the deceased and displaced, and that sometimes, she and George and Fred would just sit in the back and crack jokes so quiet that only they could hear, their arms and legs thrown over each other until they are so intertwined they could almost be one person.

And yet-,

"Stanton."  It's Mad Eye.  He leads the Order meetings now, ever since Dumbledore died and McGonagall had to stop coming.  Health issues, left over from the stunning spells that Umbridge shot at her.  Sometimes Kingsley helps, but this time it's all him, magical eye whirling around the room to pick up on any sign of disinterest.  "Are you paying attention?"

She jerks awake, shifts into position so she is sitting straight up.  Across the room, Fred is fighting off a smile and Remus is looking at her like he cannot help but worry.  "Always, Alastor."  No one calls him that.  She doesn't know why, if it was bad memories or if he just hated the name or maybe the nickname was simply better, but Audra's started to, ever since that night in the alley.  "We're trying to save lives. Fight bad guys.  Important stuff."

Someone laughs, probably Mundungus, but no one else does.  Every one else is looking between the two of them like they are waiting to see which one of them will snap, which one of them will be the first to yell.  She had never seen Mad-Eye yell.  Audra imagines that it would be frightening.

"We're talking about saving the Potter boy."  He always calls him that.  _The Potter boy._ Never Harry.  Audra knows why- calling him by his name would make Harry more real, make him more of a person.  It would make them all get close, get personal.  At the moment, for the people in this room, he is only allowed to be a mission.  That's the only way that this will succeed.  "I would have thought that that would be important to you."

"Why?"  She says, knowing she's mouthing off, knowing she's being petty, knowing that she should stop but still being unable to rein herself in.  It wastes time to have her sit back here and sulk, and yet lately, that's all that Audra seems to find herself doing.  "I'm not a part of it."

 _You made sure of that,_ she wants to say, but the message comes across anyways.  Audra had been part of the plan one day, and the next she wasn't.  The only difference she could find was that Mad-Eye caught her in that dueling club.

Never mind that she had reasons.

He doesn't care about her reasons.

Nobody does, not even Fred.

The rest of the group is murmuring, muttering between themselves.  She knows that she worries them, but at the moment, all she can do it stare across the room at Moody, who is limping towards her on his one wooden leg, glaring at her with both of his eyes until he reaches her seat.

"We don't need killers."  He's got his palms splayed flat on the table, bending forward so they are eye to eye and his scarred face is only inches from hers.  _This is what a solider looks like,_ she thinks to herself, _this is someone who went to war and was still able to come back whole._ "We need thinkers.  Fighters.  People who follow orders, none of which applies to you."

Audra didn't remember moving, but suddenly she was standing.  Across the room, Fred had stood up, too, with George's hand on his forearm.  He wouldn't move until George let's him, she knows, and is grateful, the fact that there is still someone with a level head that Fred is willing to listen to.

"But above all that," Mad-Eye says, already turning to move back to the front of the room, dismissing her the same way he had every other time she had asked him for a job, for a mission, because he knew she wanted a distraction more than she wanted anything else.  "The last thing we need is another target on our backs, which is exactly what having you there would do."

She wants to scream.  She wants to beg.  To apologize.  To say something like _I'm sorry, I'm sorry that I'm so loud and so angry and bitter, please, just let me fight, this is the only thing that I know how to do anymore, this all that I am._ And maybe everyone can see it on her face, how much moments like these are chipping away the bits of her that she had thought came away unscathed, which is why they all look so sad right now.  Why not one of them will meet her eye, not even Fred.  And she knows why- she has become someone smaller, someone lesser, and she does not even know how it happened. 

 

 

"I heard what happened."  Audra is out in the garden again.  A Weasley has come to check on her again, but this time it is not Ron, it's Ginny.  "In the meeting."

"I got benched."  Dismissed.  Replaced.  Shoved to the sidelines while everyone that she loves risks their lives, always waiting for someone else to give her permission.  "Just like I have all summer."

"They're worried about you." 

"They think I'm broken."

"And you don't?"  Audra stared at her, and Ginny stared back for a moment before sighing and sinking to her knees on the soil.  "You went through a lot the past few years.  The mark, your brother, the year with them.  The things you had to do- we shouldn't have asked you to do that."  It was the first time that anyone from the Order had ever admitted that they should shoulder some of the blame.  "It was wrong.  It was too much for anyone, let alone a girl.  And that's all you are, no matter how good you are at spells or how tough you can act, or how much you think you share with your family."

She did not want to hear this.  "What's your point?"

"My point is that you're just a kid."  Ginny was always so much smarter than everyone else.  So much kinder.  Audra never had it in her to be kind, even before this whole mess.  "Kids don't have to be heroes."

 _But you are,_ she wants to say, thinking of that night in the ministry, Ginny with her arms spread wide under the threat of Vance's wand, trying to protect Luna even when there was no help of doing so, crumpling to the floor under the pain that had been shooting up her leg and still clawing at Audra, still wanting her to let go, to leave, to be safe.  _But Harry is.  Ron, Hermione, Fred, George, everyone in that room back there, that's all they are._

"I'm not trying to be a hero."  There was dirt lining the cracks of her palms, stuffed under her nails.  Molly doesn't let her help with dinner anymore because she's not convinced that Audra ever washes it all away.  "That's never who I said I was."

"But you were."  Ginny tried to take her hand, but Audra doesn't let her.  "Audra.  You've done enough."

"No," Audra repeats, shaking her head, not sure if she is saying no to stepping away from the fight or saying no to the idea of her being a hero.  For the first time, she wants to pull out every dirty detail of the things she had done and have them spread out in front of someone else, someone good, just so someone can know the truth.  Not that it would work.  To get the real picture, they'd have to know how bad it hurt, how much the guilt weighed her down and ate her up, all those nights she spent in the dungeon and the pain that still aches deep in her bones, like it might never go away.  "No."

"Yes," Ginny says, just as emphatically, just as angry, and for the first time all summer, Audra thinks that someone is telling her the truth.  

 

 

 

Audra waits until midnight before slipping out of bed.

She doesn't make any noise.  There are spells for that but she doesn't need them, just slips on her boots and climbs down the stairs, jumping over the one that always creaks and sliding out the back door.  From there, it's a quick trip out past the lake and down the dirt path into the cornfield.

She hesitates right at the border.  The Burrow had been given every protection possible, every spell that Dumbledore could dream up layered over and over the property with immense detail.  You can't apparate if you're standing inside it.  A few inches further and she could disappear without a trace.

"Again?"  Audra closes her eyes.  "Darling, we've got to stop meeting like this."

"George."  He had known that she was going to run.  He always knows, even when everyone else doesn't, because he's the one who understands.  The one that's most like her, the only one who knows everything that she had done, all the things that she had gone through.  "Don't."

"You aren't trapped here."  He doesn't look angry at her.  He just looks tired, which is a little bit worse.  "You could just leave, you know.  Walk out in the middle of the day."

"And say what?"  _I had intended to leave before.  I never meant to come here.  I was only trying to stop you from getting hurt, not throw salt in the wound._ "Thanks for all the trouble, but I'm going to go be evil now?"

"Is that what you're doing?"

"Isn't that what you all think?"  He doesn't answer, just stares at her.  _Yes,_ his face was saying, and it doesn't sting because at least it's the truth.  But _I don't care_ was there, too, and she knew that he wasn't lying then, either.  "I just don't fit here.  Anymore.  Never did."

"Don't be stupid.  Of course you do.  I," He swallowed hard, shook his head.  "Me, Fred, my family- we love you.  We care about you.  We would do anything to protect you, don't you understand that?"

"And don't you see why that scares me so much?"  She takes a step closer without meaning to, her hands already reaching out to him, but Audra stops short of touching him and lets them fall to her sides, useless.  "You don't betray the Dark Lord.  What he did to me before, that'll be nothing to what he wants to do to me now.  He'll hurt anyone that tries to protect me."

"I'm not going to let that happen."   He steps closer to her and Audra falls back, putting more space between them.  A safe distance.  She does not know why she's trying to keep him at arms length.  It isn't about protection anymore.  "We'll take care of you, Audra."

"But I was the one who was supposed to take care of you, remember?"  Her smile is watery.  There are tears in her eyes that are threatening to spill over, but Audra just blinks them back.  She doesn't want George to know how sad she is any more than she wants Fred to know.  "That's all I was trying to do."

"I know."

"Everyone thinks I'm this terrible person," She says, and it is like it knocked something loose in her chest, like it the words had been clogging her throat and she was finally able to breathe.  "But I'm not.  And I know it's terrible, to say I was just following orders, but I _was._ He told me to keep my cover, George.  I trusted him."   George has got his arms out and Audra thinks for a moment how easy it would be to walk into them, to let someone else hold her up.  "I really did think that I was one of the good guys."

"I know."  He was crying, too, tears slipping down over his cheeks, his arms still held out to her, both of them stupidly, stupidly useless in their concern for each other, neither of them ever able to protect anything when it really matters.  "I know."

"I tried."  It hurt to draw a breath, she was crying so hard.  Audra remembered a time when she hated crying, but now it's the only time where the outside is close to matching the inside, the only time she feels close to normal.  "I tried so hard."

"I know," He repeats, and this time when George reaches out for her, she let's him, finally letting someone else be the strong one.

 


	5. Mother May I

For the first time she can remember since she took the mark, Audra gets a full night's sleep.

Normally, no matter how early she goes to bed or how late she tries to sleep in, she can't quite manage it. There are things to get done, worries that race laps around her mind, problems that she can't seem to stop trying to solve even in her sleep. It's a mindless sort of energy that keeps her tossing and turning, and even in the nights where she gets to sink down into a nightmare ridden sleep, Ginny is already there to wake her up in the morning.

( _It had to be Ginny. Molly had tried, and Fred, on the mornings that he came over for breakfast, for the most part, Ginny was the only who could back away fast enough if Audra's fists came flying, and the only one other than Hermione who was fast enough at Shield spells to throw up a guard if Audra accidentally sends a stinging hex her way.)_

( _They tell each other they are only hexes. Silly, meaningless spells that might hurt for a moment but will leave without a trace, but Audra cannot forget one of the first mornings where Ginny came to shake her awake and they had not yet known this particular side affect of her nightmares, and Audra was out of bed in half an instant, sending them both tumbling to the floor, her wand at Ginny's neck. Audra couldn't remember any of it but the waking, but Ginny had said that her eyes were blank the entire time, like she was staring off at ghosts, but they both remembered the flash of green light that had ricocheted off the ceiling when Ginny finally got her hand between them to push Audra's wand away. They don't talk about it._ )

Last night, though, she had fallen asleep. Maybe she was just that exhausted -or maybe, and the hope of it was too small and fleeting for her to really to believe it was true, maybe she was getting better- but Audra was asleep the moment her head hit the pillow, and even if she had nightmares, she could not remember them. This morning, there was no aching limbs or tears drying on her cheeks, just light filtering in through the crack in the curtains. It was bright enough in the room that she knew she had really overslept, bright enough that she could keep track of the swirl of dust motes spiraling through the air, which was her first clue that something was wrong.

The Burrow is a lot of things, but it isn't quiet.

Someone should have woken her up by now.

"Molly?" She shoves herself up on one elbow and squints towards the still closed door. There's no response, just the soft clattering of dishes, and Audra lets herself have one more moment of being buried under the covers before she pads to the door, pulling one of Fred's old sweaters over her head as she goes.  "Molly, is everything alright?"

There is no breakfast on the table.  There is only the day's Daily Prophet, and Fred and George standing behind it.  Molly and Ginny are in the kitchen arguing in fierce whispers, but both of them fall quiet when they see that Audra had come into the room.

"Fred?"  She looks at Fred first, and he pulls his hand away from his mouth to answer her, but just shakes his head helplessly.  Audra can see the marks on the skin of his knuckles where he had bitten down on them, and that brings with if the first burst of fear, spreading sour across her tongue.   "What's wrong?" 

"Audra, love," Fred says, rounding the table, and Audra does not miss the way that George is trying to pull the paper out of her line of sight, trying to protect her from it, always trying to protect her.  "Maybe it's best if we sit down,"

She doesn't get the chance to hear the rest of what he was going to say.  Audra had enough of being protected, and was too caught up in the righteousness of her own thoughts to think that maybe they do just want the best for her, so she makes an awkward little stumble towards the table, laying her hand flat over the paper.

"Audra," George says, and it is different from the way that Fred says her name.  Not soft, not pleading.  Not like he thinks he needs to protect her from things, but like he would, if it came down to it.  "I think you should go with Fred."

"I think you should let me see the paper."  She is terribly afraid, and when she is afraid Audra does not like to sit.  Does not like to sit and wait for someone to tell her bad news when they think they've found the moment where it would hurt the least.   She tugs on it, just a bit, and two of them hear the edges of the paper rip.  "George."

"Audra,"  Fred says again, and now Molly's voice has joined the protest, her voice raising as Fred puts one guiding hand on her shoulder to steer her towards the couch, but George is the one she is looking towards, still locking eyes with him, trying to tell him that no matter what everyone thinks that she needs, this is what she wants, and what she wants is for someone to let her make her own choices. 

He understands, because George is always on the same wavelength with her, even more than Fred is, or Emmeline and Clary ever were.  He understands, sighing softly, and there's a soft rustle of paper as he slides his hands away, and she can already see the pictures between the spread of his fingers, just a sliver of it, just enough for her to know that they were right.

This is not something that she wanted to see.  
  


 

 

  
  


Ginny tells her later that she screamed. "It was a terrible sound," She said, and her voice sounded funny, a bit clogged, and her face was crumpled in on itself from the remembering. Audra wondered how bad it had to be, after all the terrible things that Ginny had heard in her life, for this one to stick out so much. "I never thought that you could make a sound, and then you just, you just sort of crumpled. Fred tried to catch you, but-,"

Audra remembered the crumpling. She had seen the picture, of that half rotted skeleton flashing on the paper, its mouth twisted in a macabre grin as aurors worked to cut away the ropes binding it to the chair, and Audra had known within half a second why the surroundings seemed so familiar. She didn't need to read the article to know who had been found or where, she had just sunk to the ground, a conscious choice of letting her legs cave in and sink to the ground, her fingers still gripped onto that paper, crumpling it, holding it to her chest, like that could bring her mother back to her again.

"Mom," She had remembered repeating, once, twice, a third time, crouched on the floor of the Weasley's kitchen with her knees tucked up underneath her, bent double with her trembling fingers barely brushing the outline of what used to be her mother's face. "Mom."

That's when Fred finally made it around the table, kneeling down beside her so fast that she thought his knees would split, gathering her up in his arms. He was talking to her, but the words were garbled together, smashing into each other to make one long, unintelligible sound, and all Audra could do was sit there and wait, the rest of the feedback from the room coming to her from far away, like she was underwater.

It's only when Mrs. Weasley comes to take the paper away from her that Audra snaps back into herself for a little bit. Only then that she hears the words that Fred is saying, the gentle hushing, the _it's alright, it's okay, I've got you, everything's going to be okay_ and the rhythmic rocking of his motions, the hands that were moving from her shoulders to her back to the side of her face, like he couldn't quite decide where they would be more useful. Only then that she looks up and catches sight of Ginny's face, abnormally pale with tears sparkling in her eyes and the palm of her hand pressed tight against her mouth, and the way that George was gripping onto the edge of the tabletop, his shoulders shaking with the effort of holding himself in place instead of going to her, but never dropping his eyes from the sight in front of him.

"Here, dearie," Molly was saying, trying her best to pry Audra's hands away from the paper, clucking her tongue all the while. It was the same sound that had followed her every time that Audra had been at the Burrow and had gotten hurt, like when she had fallen out of the tree and broke her arm, or took a bludger to the nose, or happened to get splatters of potion on her clothes. It used to be comforting, but now it sends her reeling, having those memories be attached to this, and she scrambles to get away from her and away from Fred, wanting nothing more in that moment than to be left alone. "Just give it to me, give it to me and we can move to the couch, alright, how does that sound?"

"No." Audra tightened her grip on the newspaper and pulled it back, pushed off from Fred so hard that he would have tumbled back onto the floor if he hadn't caught himself. Everyone is staring at her, wary, but Audra can't bring herself to care, just walks to the counter and bends over it, lets herself heave out one dry sob before spreading out the paper in front of her. "I want to read it."

"Audra." Fred was on his feet and moving towards her before anyone else was, and moves so that his hand was covering up most of the article. It makes her drag her eyes away from the headline and move to his face. The concern she saw there makes her flinch. "I don't know if it's a good idea."

"It's my _mother,_ " She says, like that was something he could have possibly missed, and Fred's other hand flutters at his side, like he knows that touch would not be welcome here. "I need to read it."

"Let me. I can read it, and, and I," It's strange, how even after all this time they had spent fighting this war together, this is the first time that either of them really had to deal with grief. She had pushed past what had happened with Vance, buried the wound until it turned into scarred skin that wouldn't move the right way, and that had ruined her. This time, she was drowning in it, and Fred was right beside her, helpless, floundering every time he tried to make it better. "I can tell you."

"Fred." She is trying to say thank you. She is trying to say that she is okay, even if it is a lie. Audra is trying to be strong, but everyone is looking at her like they keep expecting her to break. Audra wonders what's wrong with her, that even the process of knowing, of grieving, feels like something that has to be checked off her to-do list. Wonders what's left, if she is too tired to feel even the pain of this. "I need to know."

"Okay." He doesn't argue any further than that, and when Molly opens her mouth to protest, he shakes her head no. Fred just backs away from her, still looking like he's not convinced that this is a good idea, looking like he had every moment since he promised her that he would never ask her to stay. "But I'm here for you, okay?" He's got his hand underneath the paper, lined up right where her fingers were still ghosting over the image of her mother, and it's just enough contact that she can draw a little comfort from it. "Whenever you decide you need it."

 

 

  
  


In the end, she had to admit that the article contained nothing that she didn't know already.

Just that it was her mother, the esteemed ministry executive Ms. Stanton, who had been found tied to a chair in her daughters childhood bedroom. The younger Stanton, had, of course, been estranged from her family for quite some time and the ministry is making no comment on whether or not she is to be questioned over the matter of her mother's death. After a prolonged absence from the ministry, auror officials were sent to the family mansion and found Ms. Stanton in a state of considerable decay. Mr. Stanton could not be reached for comment, and is believed to be on the run. Dark arts are expected to have been involved.

Audra reads it in the same way that she used to read over her textbooks before she approached a potion, scrutinizing every word, every line and punctuation, like it might be holding some clue, some secret message.

Audra's not sure who she expects it to be from, her mother or father or the Dark Lord, or maybe all three.

Not that it matters.

She wouldn't go to them, even if there was.  
  


 

 

 

  
  


"I killed her."  She chokes on the words.  Audra is bent over on the edge of bed, occasionally heaving into the bucket that Fred had placed in front of her, trying to focus on his hands tracing circles on her back instead of the roiling in her stomach.  After she had calmed down and read through the entire paper for any mention of her parents, Audra had sunk down onto one of the kitchen chairs that George had dragged over to her, and Molly had pronounced her in a state of shock, shoving a cup of tea in her hands.  She lasted until Fred had helped her up the stairs before being overcome by a wave of nausea so strong that Fred had to carry her into the room. 

"You didn't," Fred says, so used to these kinds of comments that the motions of his hands don't even slow, and he tucks a piece of hair behind her ear.  He's so gentle with her that it makes her want to cry.  "Whatever happened to your mother, it wasn't your fault."

"You don't understand."  She heaves again, and she doesn't know if it's from grief or guilt or shock, and chokes on a sob.  "She _caught_ me.  I was trying to get word to you or George about the attack on Hogwarts, through the parchment, but Bella had warned her, and," _And she chose them.  Them, and her own life over her daughter, and she tried to stun me, but I was faster, I was better, I'm so much better, Fred, and then it was me with the wand and her staring at me like I was an executioner just as much as I was someone she could be proud of._ "And I tied her to the chair, because I didn't want to die."  _Dying wouldn't be so bad.  But I didn't want the dungeon again, with the dark and the cold and the visits from Wormtail and Bellatrix laughter floating through the silence, so cold and clear that I couldn't tell if it was real or my imagination, I would have done anything not to go back there, I would die before I go back there._ "And I left her."

"Audra."  His hands left her back, moved to grip her own instead, pries her nails away from where they had been scraping at the inside of her palms.  There are spots where she had rubbed the skin raw already.  Molly said that stopping now was the only hope she had of avoiding scars.  "It's not your fault."

"I thought someone would come looking.  I thought they would come find her."  She really was crying, now.  Not the inhuman sound that she must have made down there in the kitchen, but something different, something broken, something that sounds like a little girl who can't find her mother.  Like she had woken up from a nightmare and tried to crawl into her parents bed only to find that no one was there, all the while knowing instinctively that no one would be there again.  "I was wrong."

Audra doesn't know why she ever thought that.  There had been a time where Voldemort had valued her parents, as much as he had valued anyone, but Audra had quickly surpassed them in terms of what she could do for the Dark Lord's cause.  They were honored because they had brought her into the fold, because they raised her and loved her and she loved them, but that only meant that when she turned traitor, Audra's parents were able to be held as a bargaining chip and she didn't even realize it.  She hadn't needed to scan the paper for some sign that only she would notice- her mother was the message.  Her mother was the warning that Audra didn't need, a not so subtle reminder that the dark lord would be coming for her, and nothing would stop him.

Showing his followers the cost of betrayal is so much more important to him than rewarding loyalty.

"It's okay-," Fred starts, his arm around her shoulders again, and Audra shoves him away once more, acting like she's going to be sick again just to be able to dodge away from him.

"That's what she said, when I was leaving her in that chair.  That it was okay.  That I was good, and she and dad were the ones who made the wrong choices.  She said," And here she sobbed again, she could not help it, the sound ripped itself out of her chest on its own accord, and she bends over at the waist like it had pained her.  Maybe it did- certainly, something inside her feels like it is cutting her apart, burrowing its way free from the inside out.  "She said that she was proud of me."

Fred didn't seem to have anything to say to that, but that's okay.  Audra didn't really expect him to.


	6. The Dursley's

It's the first time that Audra isn't taking part in the fight.

She doesn't like it, the waiting. Audra had known, in the back of her mind, that this is something that Fred and George have to endure on a habitual basis, both because of her and also because of their family's tendency to put themselves in the line of fire just because it is the right thing to do, but that was always a distant thought, with her never really bothering to think about what that meant.

She knows now. She also knows that she never was quite as appreciative of it as she should have been.

"This is the part of the war, too," Molly said, coming up beside her. She had already brewed three pots of tea and scrubbed the kitchen clean. Audra and Ginny had accepted the cups whenever Molly poured them a new one, never mind the collection of untouched tea cups that was gathering on the kitchen table. "Sometimes I think it's the hardest part."

Audra draws in a breath and lets it out slowly, controlled, and then manages a smile in Molly's direction. It's not often that she takes a moment to appreciate that Molly was someone who had gone through all of this before- and what's more, done it as a mother, as someone for whom the stakes were high. From the stories that she had shared, though Molly had fought before, she was much more often delegated to the role of babysitter and homemaker, providing a place of steady comfort for all kinds of wayward witches and wizards to stop and recuperate from whatever mission Dumbledore had sent them on, doing it all with a baby on her hip. And, most impressively, doing it all while waiting for her husband to come back home to her, not knowing that he would.

"They'll be okay," Audra said, trying to reach back to the part of her who used to comfort Draco or bark orders at Emmeline. Though she doesn't know why- what right does Audra have to be afraid, when Molly's entire family is going to be out there risking their lives tonight? Whatever love Audra feels for Fred and George, it is nothing for the love and fear that Molly must have for them. "They'll take care of each other."

There's a flash of something that shutters down over Molly's face and then her hands are moving again, tying an apron at her back and setting out to kneading yet another loaf of bread to stick in the ice box for the week's dinners, and Audra can't help but feel like she had done something wrong. Across the room, Ginny just shrugs at her before abandoning what must be her fifth cup of tea to come stand by the window with her.

"Come sit down." Ginny was good at the waiting game, too. But she was better at being a fighter. It was probably killing her to sit here just as much as it was Audra, but Ginny is much less likely to pitch a fight about it. She had been watching her family run off to war her entire life, and had been found herself being used as collateral damage enough to know that some things are out of their control. "They haven't even left Harry's yet, Audra." There's something patient on her face, something a bit more like Clary than Audra had ever noticed, and that more than anything has her taking the offered hand to be led back to the couch, only for Molly to shove another cup of tea in her hands. This time, it is so hot that it almost burned her palms, but Audra doesn't think of dropping it, just clutches it tighter. "We're in for a long night."  
  


 

 

 

Eventually, Ginny gives up on her restraint and starts pacing the living room. "For Merlin's sake, Ginerva," Molly snaps, and Audra thinks it is the first time that she had heard anyone besides McGonagall call Ginny by her first name. "Why don't you just go outside and wait for them, if you're that upset about it?"

Ginny makes a sound in her throat like an angry cat before tossing her hair over her shoulder and heading out into the yard, letting the door slam behind her. Audra waits for half a moment before following her, staying just long enough to see if Molly seems like she needs company, but there is something about Ginny's shadow standing at the edge of the yard that makes her think the younger Weasley needs it more than her mother. Or maybe Audra just wanted to be able to see them the moment that they get back, no matter who comes first.

"I thought I saw someone, out by the fields. There was a light." Ginny doesn't turn her head when Audra comes to stand beside her. "Turns out it was just this little guy."

She holds out her hand, and there, resting on one scabbed up knuckle was a firefly, its light blinking in and out. Audra huffs out a laugh so quiet that it's barely even a sound, and the firefly takes off, going higher and higher until the two girl lose sight of them.

Audra's just starting to gather the courage to talk when Ginny speaks again. "Don't tell me they're going to be alright, okay?" She's got her eyes squeezed shut. "Because I know that we take care of each other, and that we're good fighters, but- but the other side is good too. Voldemort," She has trouble saying the word and it comes out funny, and Audra is glad that her eyes are closed, because that way Ginny does not see the way that Audra had flinched at the sound. "He doesn't get this powerful without being able to fight, and... Everyone keeps telling me that we'll win because we're _good_ , like that's supposed to be enough, but this isn't a fairy tale, so, so just, just if you were going to tell me that everything is going to be okay, don't, alright?" There's a pause where there's nothing but the sound of the wind whipping through the cornstalks and Ginny's ragged breathing. Audra isn't making any sound at all. "I'm not stupid."

"I never said you were stupid," Audra answers, automatically, both because she thinks it is the thing least likely to upset her and also because it was the easiest part of that to address.

"Naive, then." Ginny says, and her jaw is clenched, and with the way the failing light is hitting her Audra is reminded in awful clarity how much she reminds her of the twins. "I'm not naive."

Audra doesn't say anything to that. Can't say anything, but Ginny's right- any comfort that she has to give will only be fake, sugar spun lies, or a harsh truth that will do neither of them any good if she voices it out loud. Instead, she reaches out at her side, fumbles for her hand and holds it tight. Under the circumstances, it's the best she can do.

 

 

 

Harry comes home.

Then Hermione, and Ron, and then George, and Audra goes weak kneed with relief, the breath that had been caught in her throat all night suddenly coming a little easier, because she does not know yet that something has gone terribly wrong, cannot make out his face with that amount of clarity in the darkness, and it is only when she sees how George is still slumped over onto Remus' shoulder and feels Ginny's nails scrabbling at the inside of her arm that Audra gets that sinking feeling in her stomach that something has gone terribly, horribly, unthinkably, wrong.

"Molly," She says, but her voice comes out as a rasp, so she swallows the sound and tries again.  In the meantime she has stumbled forward, grabbing at George's side to hold him upright as Remus and Harry attempt to lift him, and she almost chokes from the scent of all the blood.  It is painting his face and spreading down his side, George so soaked with it that when Audra is finally able to transition George's weight from her hands to Remus', her fingers slide across his skin and come away stained red. 

"Molly!" And this time, the sound comes out loud and clear, panicked, and Molly's face wavers in the kitchen window a moment before she is running out in the yard to meet her son.  It's all Audra can do to keep standing, watching the group move into the Burrow and lay George down on the couch.  Harry is bending over him, handing over bandages and bottles, but Ginny, just like Audra, were standing frozen. 

( _It's the sight of Ginny, she thinks, that gets her moving.  The reminder of how much she looks like twins, coupled with how terrified she appears, reminds Audra fiercely of the time where Fred had made her promise to take care of his siblings, if anything were to happen to them._ All of them, _he had said, and she knew that he meant George, George above everyone else, because he would need the most help,_ but especially the younger ones.)

"Come on," Audra says, intending to pull her along, but she stops short of touching her when she remembers that her hands are covered in George's blood.  "He needs you."

That gets her moving, and Audra pushes past Hagrid and into the living room, shoving Harry out of the way a bit roughly to take her place beside Mrs. Weasley.  She had never been as good at healing as she was with the hurting, but that's not to say that she didn't know how to do it- it was more that she didn't know how to be gentle, didn't know how to keep the fear off her face, and this, seeing George nonsensical and pale like he was, was very, very terrifying.

"I can help," She says, when Molly gives her a glance that is half fear and half hate, like she wants nothing more than to throw her out of the Burrow entirely.  "I can do this," Audra insists, because she knows that two pairs of hands are better than one, and takes the wash cloth out of Molly's hands to start cleaning away the blood so they can find where the wound was at.  When she realizes that the ear was completely gone, her hand stills for a moment, but she pushes past it, her ministrations sending red tinged water trickling down onto the couch cushions.  "Let me help, Molly."

It goes faster with the two of them, like Audra knew it would, even though Audra's hands were shaking.  She unstoppers bottles and unravels bandages and uses the lumos spell to shine a light into the worse part of the wound and doesn't flinch, even when the smell and sight of it makes her want to gag.  All the others have cleared back to the kitchen and are watching with a dumbstruck expression, except for Ginny, who had knelt at the side of the couch to grab her brother's hand and doesn't show any sign of leaving anytime soon. 

That's where they are when Fred and Mr. Weasley finally get back, Mr. Weasley bursting forward with curses at his lips.  Fred is deathly quiet, quiet enough that Audra doesn't even notice that he was there until he sunk down to his knees beside her and took up the hand that Ginny had been holding only a second earlier, his face just as pale as George's.

There was silence, a break in the chaos that everyone clearly expected Fred to fill, but after another moment where Fred seemed unlikely to do anything but gawk, Mrs. Weasley came round the sofa.  "How are you feeling Georgie?"

Audra took a step back, over towards where Harry was standing.  Her hands were still covered in blood and dittany, and with the rapidly enlarging number of Weasley's that was gathering in the living room, she thought it best to give them as much space as she could.

She couldn't see much, but she could see Fred's face, only growing paler as George lifted his arm up to grope at the bandages on the side of his head.  She wondered if he knew- if he thought the muffled sound was because of the wrappings, or if he could tell that the ear was gone, how deep Snape's curse had cut him.  And she could hear his response, even though it was only a whisper.  "Saint like."

"What's wrong with him?"  Fred asked, and forget every other time that she thought he had been afraid, this was what Fred Weasley looked like when he was afraid.  At his brother's answer, his face had turned from being scared to looking like someone had gutted him.  "Is his mind affected?"

"Saintlike," George repeated again, and Fred stared wildly from his brother to his mother, the two people he thought would always have the answers suddenly holding none that he could understand.  "You see... I'm holy.  _Holey,_ Fred, geddit?"

Mrs. Weasley burst into sobs, and even though Audra knew it wasn't the time, she broke down into uncontrollable giggles, laughing so hard that she was crying.  She had to lean on Harry to support her weight, and at the couch, Fred had collapsed onto his brother, holding his hand so tight that they're knuckles were turning white, but even as the two reunited, Fred still took the time to lift his eyes to meet Audra's.

 _We're alright,_ he seemed to be saying, and Audra knows without a doubt that if he had been out in the yard earlier with Ginny, he would have known exactly what to say.  _Everything's going to be alright._

 

 

 

  
  


They raise a glass for Mad-Eye.

Harry is drinking more than she thinks that he should, seeing as how she doesn't know if he ever had firewhiskey before, and Fred is still unwilling to stray too far from George's spot on couch, but Mrs. Weasley had stopped crying, and honestly, there is a part of Audra that is thinking that they were lucky to only have lost one out of their number, so she's fine.

A bit tense.  A bit stretched too thin, maybe, and entirely sure that she is compartmentalizing her feelings about Mad-Eye to deal with later, but fine.

"Where are you going?"  Audra hadn't been paying too much attention to the conversation, having turned away as soon as Harry had gotten done with his admirable but slightly stupid speech about him trusting all of them, but the combined voices of both Tonks and Fleur made her jump.

It becomes clear within a moment where they were going, even though no one looks very happy about the job, let alone Remus and Bill.

"Wait."  Audra pushes away from her couch.  Thinks that she could at least do this much.  Let one of them stay home with their wife.  Privately, she hopes it is Bill.  Audra wants to give Mrs. Weasley at least that much.  "I'll go with you."

"Audra."  Remus' answering smile is tired, but kind, the way that he used to smile at her in school.  He was one of her favorite teachers.  Shame that Snape went and got him fired.  "You really don't have to.  You should stay."

"No.  No."  She waves away the look of concern that had come over Mrs. Weasley's face.  "I haven't done anything all night, I can go with you, or with Bill, and one of you can stay, it's a two person job, really," She looks around at all their faces and really wishes that she had thought to wash her hands, but in all the chaos of the night she had managed to forget about the blood.  "I want to help."

"No. Audra."  For a moment, she thinks that it is Fred, but in the next second she realizes that the sound isn't quite right.  It's George, propping himself on one elbow to look at her over the back of the couch, and even that effort had him turning a sickly shade of white.  "Don't go."

"George."  It works better than if anyone else had asked her to stay.  She crosses the room to lean down over the side of the couch to catch at his hand, and then to smile at Fred.  "I'll be back before you know it."

"Please."  He does not let go of her hand, just looks at her, the same fear that she had felt all night curling in his eyes, and she knows before she even looks away that she would listen.  "Stay."

Remus and Bill go.  She stays.

 

 

  
  


There's a tense arguement between Molly and Fred and Audra, but in the end, she's the one who pulls the night watch.  "It'll be fine.  I'm still wide awake.  He's sleeping."  She eyeballs the both of them meaningfully, tries to shove them towards the stairs without seeming insensitive, but privately, she agrees with Mrs. Weasley's theory that a hot shower and a good night's rest can do wonders for someone's nerves.  "If I need help, I'll yell for you."

"I'll be right upstairs," Mrs. Weasley had said, repeating herself in a way that seemed mildly threatening, but Fred had only smiled, pressing a kiss to the side of her head and ducking down to leave one on George's forehead before bounding up the stairs after his mother.  She's fairly certain that he'll sleep in Ron's room, or maybe Ginny's.  After spending so long sharing a room with George and then with the boys at Hogwarts, he has trouble sleeping if he can't hear the sound of someone else breathing beside him.

She's sure that she could go to sleep, but doesn't, just warms one of the cups of tea on the table that she's fairly certain are hers and curls up underneath an afghan, her wand laying beside her with the tip lit.  Audra had made it sound like she was doing this as a favor, but really, she knows that she won't be able to be calm unless she can see with her own eyes that George is okay.

"I can feel you staring."  George says, and she thinks that someone who had lost as much blood as he had shouldn't be able to sound that sarcastic.

"I'm not staring.  I'm your nurse."  It's not her best comeback, but she's too happy to hear him talking that she doesn't care, just throws the afghan off her lap and leans closer.  "The watching is required."

"Still."  He takes a deep breath and she can see how even that makes him wince.  "Creepy."

There's a pause where she doesn't do anything, doesn't even really take a deep breath, and then he smiles again, cracking one eye open and moving so he's one his side, facing her.  Audra wants to tell him not to bother, that it wasn't worth the pain, but she doesn't like to be babied even when she's hurt, and she knows that George doesn't either.

"Still staring," He says, and then sighs, his hand moving to brush against the gauze before he repositions himself.  Audra notices that the side with the missing ear is carefully hidden out of sight and has to fight back the urge to tell him that wasn't the reason she can't seem to look away.  "It's not your fault, you know," He says, gesturing at the kitchen in a way that she doesn't know what he means- if he meant Harry, or Mad-Eye, or maybe himself and he just didn't have the best sense of direction at the moment.  "No one had any clue that Snape was going to do what he did.  So this," He taps his missing ear, even though she can't see it.  "Isn't on you."

"It's not that."  She slips off the chair to kneel beside him and reaches over to rest her hand on the mess of gauze wrapping his head, right where she knew the deepest part of the wound would be.  Audra isn't sure if he knows that she spent a good part of the night cleaning the blood of his face and holding a light over the gash on his head, but she wasn't going to mention it, just keeps her touch feather light, careful not to hurt him.  "But I'll kill him for it.  All of them."

When she had touched him, George hadn't flinched, but he had shifted his gaze away from her, his eyes skittering away to look at the ceiling.  It's with some effort that he brings his gaze back.  "But what he did isn't what's got you so upset," He says, watching her, and for the first time, she hates how well he knows her, because what he says makes her push her hand away and turn back into the couch cushions, hiding both his face and his missing ear from view.

"Don't worry," He says, and she is still sitting there, her hand resting helplessly on the couch cushions, wishing she had just stayed in the chair, and even though his voice is muffled by the pillow, it does nothing to hide the hurt.  "I'm glad it was me instead of him, too."

 

**dialogue that you recognize is taken from "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows"**

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey I switched my insta so now you can come talk to me on @olive.writes.fanfic


	7. Preparing

Wedding preparations are in full swing, but so are Hermione's.

"I just need a little help," She had said, her eyes darting somewhere over Audra's head to where Mrs. Weasley was likely to barge in at any moment.  "There's only a few potions that I can't figure out how to do, and normally I would just roll with it, but this isn't," She's wringing her hands in her lap, over and over, her fingers twisting and nails digging into her palms.  Audra wants to reach out and pull them apart but knows that sometimes pain is the only thing that can hold a person together when they are on the edge of falling apart.  "This isn't like we're just going to fail a test or something, we need- _I need_ to be sure that whatever I make will work."

"Of course I'll help you."  Audra said it without thinking.  Didn't even have to question what this meant, if Fred would be disappointed in her for letting herself be drawn back in or if Mrs. Weasley was going to be angry when she found out.  It didn't matter- this was a job, something secret, something important, and it was a part of the fight.  It gave Audra something to do during those long nights where she sat in Fred and George's old room and just stared at the wall, wishing she was anywhere but there, or at least hoping that the next night, she wouldn't be alone.  "What do you need?"

They needed, as it turned out, a lot of things.  Poly juice potion.  Dittany.  Veritseum, sleeping draughts.

"Merlin."  Audra squinted down at the list.  "You sure you don't want to pick something more complicated?"

"I know," Hermione repeated, her eyes squeezing shut, her hands fluttering again, and this time Audra really did reach out to grab at her hands.  "But I don't know how long this is going to take, and-,"

Audra doesn't ask what _this_ referred to.  She knows that none of them will say anything.  It was Harry's mission, handed down from Dumbledore, and Audra knows better than anyone the things that Dumbledore might ask of you, never mind if you are a child, never mind if you don't want to do everything alone.

She just hopes that Harry is smarter than she was.

It's so easy to lose track of things when you're doing them on someone else's say so.

"Don't worry."  There was something about having a job to do that made Audra' skin settle, like it wasn't that big of a stretch to make herself fit in her own body.  "I'll take care of it."  
  
  


It makes her better, helping them. She would have thought that she would have been tired, what with Hermione sneaking into her room every night so they can make potions and Ginny always watching them out of the corner of her eye when they whisper together. The wedding preparations hadn't stopped, either- Mrs. Weasley was still barking orders every time she saw one of them together. Audra had polished more silverware than she thought the Burrow could possibly hold and had used up an entire bottle of dittany when she burned her hand after turning on the faucet without noticing it was still boiling from when Mrs. Weasley had been cleaning the china.

"You look happier." Fred is sitting across from her in the living room, a mountain of napkins on the coffee table between them. They were supposed to be folding them to look like swans. Audra hasn't got a clue how to do that, but Fred's are coming out vaguely bird shaped. All of hers sort of look like limp turnips. "Less..."

He trails off, but smiles brightly, and Audra just hums, trying to keep herself from wondering what the end of that sentence was. Less angry, less sad, less ready to snap at the slightest provocation. Less something.

When Audra doesn't respond, Fred starts up again, trying to fold two napkins at a time by waving his wand extra wildly. They just combine into a twisted tangle that he had to undo by hand.

"One good thing about all this, though." Fred was forcing his way through the night with a smile plastered over his face, like he was convinced that if he just kept telling himself that everything was fine, it would be. Audra is trying her best to play along, even with the smell from the veritseum that she had bottled up this morning still clinging to her clothes. She wanted to do this for Fred, and if pretending that nothing was wrong with their lives is what he wanted, she would give it to him. "No one can say it's a security risk when I come to visit you."

Audra laughs. "One bad thing," She adds, finally giving up on the napkins and moving over to sit beside him, "is that your mom gives us a job to do every time she sees us together."

"She's just doing her motherly duty." Fred abandons the napkins, too, and Audra hopes that Mrs. Weasley isn't planning on checking on them. It's too late for her to come and give them a new job, anyways, so she thinks that they're free for the night. "Making sure we're too busy for," He chickens out at the last moment and coughs, staring into the fire instead of looking at her.

"We're getting off easier than them, anyways." There's a loud yell from the kitchen, and then Hermione and Mrs. Weasley's voices both climbing over each other. Audra doesn't think that Hermione had even disagreed with either of Ron's parents before, but everything that she was doing to help with the wedding and making sure that she and Ron and Harry were ready at a moment's notice had her stretched a little too thin. Audra winced at the clatter of dishes, and then the door banged open and shut, Hermione leaving to storm up the stairs. "She's been working them like house elves."

"Mum's having a hard time of it." Fred's hand tightened on hers. "Knowing that they're leaving."

"Just because she's keeping them busy doesn't mean they're not going to go. It just means that they'll be less prepared when they do." Audra looked at the carpet instead of him. "Just because something is hard doens't mean they won't go through with it. They've been doing hard things for as long as they've known each other."

There's a beat between her words and before Fred answers, long enough that Audra looks up to see what had to distracted him, only to find Molly standing in front of her.

"So you think I should just let them go?" Fred's hand was tightening around her arm, a warning, but Audra never was good at being cautious. Never was good at being gentle. "Let my children run away to god knows where and do Merlin knows what, on the word of a dead man?"

"They've done more than most people I know." It's something that Sirius had said to Molly back when he was still alive. It had made her angry than and it makes her angry now. "And they're not exactly children anymore."

"I'm not your parents. I'm not Dumbledore. I'm not okay with, with just," Molly spluttered for a moment, and then reached down to fold up a blanket just to keep her hands busy. "Just using kids as cannon fodder in a war that they have everything to do with."

"They have everything to do with it." Audra was trying to be nice. Trying to make her voice soothing, but someone has to say this. Someone has to make Molly understand that she needs to let them go without a fight, because Audra knew she was right- if they don't have time to plan, they won't be prepared, and if they aren't prepared, the chances get ten times greater that they're going to fail. "And Dumbledore knew what he was doing, even when he asks too much, he never gives someone a job that they're not going to be able to do. We just have to trust him."

There's something idiotic about trusting in the word of a dead man, and maybe Molly could see that on her face.

"You trusted him. Did everything he said. And how did that turn out for you?" Audra reels back for a moment, and then Molly waves her hand, staring down at the pile of napkins at their feet. "But never mind that. It's late, and you've both worked so hard. How bout I finish these up? The two of you turn in early? Merlin knows you need the rest, Audra, the shadows under your eyes are getting deeper by the day."

Her smile was bright, like they weren't just talking about sending her youngest son off to die. Like it was that easy for her to forgive Audra of anything. Maybe it is. Audra wouldn't know- she has no idea what it's like to love like that, so freely and deeply, like she never runs out.

"No. Molly." Audra raises herself to her knees, reaches out to pick up a napkin, feeling like her hands had grown five times bigger, as clumsy as she had become. "We can help. Let us help."

Molly shook her head no, and even though her head was ducked down, Audra could tell that she was trying not to cry.

"Come on, Audra." Fred's hand on her elbow was gentle but it was clear that she wasn't supposed to argue. "Leave it alone."  
  
  


Audra does other things.

She brews potions, and stocks the first aid kit, and sneaks clothes out of Ron's closet for Hermione to put in her bag, and whenever Mrs. Weasley asks any of them to help her, Audra keeps the smile on her face, sweet and compliant and not at all like she had told Mrs. Weasley that she had to let her children go be soldiers.

Harry might have been the leader of the trio, but it was Hermione who was going to get them through the war.  Audra could remember a time where she thought that she was weak, but weak was not a word that she thinks anyone would use to describe Hermione Granger.

"Come on.  Get up."  Audra doesn't offer her a hand, just nudges her with the toe of her boot.  "We have to go again."

"No."  Hermione coughed out the word and rolled onto her side, clutching at her ribs and gasping.  "I give, I'm done."  She pushes herself up with one arm, her hair falling haphazardly down around her face.  In the dying light, she reminds Audra of Clary.  "Let's just go back inside."

 _I'm not the fighter,_ Hermione had said, when she asked Audra to train her.  _I know all the spells, but they aren't the kind I'm good at._

"You think you're going to be able to call off a real fight just because you get knocked off your feet?  You fall, you die."  Audra nudged at her again, this time a little harder.  "We're going again."

Hermione glares at her and then hauls herself to her feet.  Her legs were shaking and she had to lean against a tree to stand.  If Ron were here to watch, he would have punched Audra in the face by now for what she was doing, but Audra wasn't sorry.  She had to learn, and it was better to learn with someone who wouldn't hold back than someone who made you believe that you were invincible.

"I'm just no good at it.  Some people aren't good at certain spells, like," Hermione paused to cough again.  Audra had hit her harder than she meant to.  "Like Tonks not being good at cleaning or Ginny always hurting you with the healing spells."

Audra stares at her, long enough that Hermione manages to catch her breath, then she lunges forward at her, taking three lurching steps until she has her pressed up against the tree.

"You're scared, aren't you?"  She had taught Emmeline how to fight.  Taught her and turned her into a killer before anyone else could get their hands on her.  At the time, she had thought that she was protecting her.  "Of me, for me.  Scared to hurt me, scared to get hurt."

Hermione's eyes are wide in the darkness.  "Of course I am."  She didn't sound scared.  She sounded like she was facing down with Draco, wary but confident.  Audra wonders how much of that was real.  "I'm terrified."

"Good.  Good."  Audra lets her go and spins around.  "That's going to keep you alive.  But these spells, they need to work for you."  She sounds like her aunt.  She's using words her aunt had said to her, when she watched her and Emmeline train.  "You need to mean them, Hermione.  You have to feel what you want to do someone, and the magic will do it."

"But I don't mean it."  She had dirt smeared on her arms and on one side of her face.  "I don't want to hurt anyone."

Audra laughed, but even to her it sounded sad, brittle and breakable.  "Trust me," And this time, when she leveled her wand at Hermione, she didn't hesitate before sending the first spell Audra's way.  "You will."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come find me on my BRAND NEW Instagram account, @olive.writes.fanfic


	8. The Wedding

Fred was right.  Their Aunt Muriel was horrid.

"You."  Audra didn't know quite what to make of her, but here she was, whacking George round the shins with her cane to make him move, standing in the middle of the Weasley's dirt driveway with bony hands clutching to her dragon skin clutch, slightly filmy eyes squinting towards the both of them like she couldn't make them out through the dust.  "George, is it?"

George had her round the shoulders to help her keep her balance on the uneven ground, and over the top of Muriel's head, he shot Audra an exasperated look.  "That's me. One of the twins, remember?"

"I remember.  You put beetles in the soup."  Muriel makes a sound in the back of her throat, and Audra is just thinking that maybe it would have been best if George hadn't been the one to seat her when she added, in a tone like she had no idea that she was saying something unpleasant- "Do you know that your head looks a little lopsided?"

There's a moment where no one moves, just Muriel, shuffling forward through the dirt.  Audra stares at George and he pauses, a wrinkle between his eyebrows as he reaches after her.  She can tell the exact moment he figures it out- how he flinches, the dusting of red that was covering his cheeks, and the way he turns away from the both of them, just a bit, to hide the side of his face with all the scarring.

"Must be the way I did my hair," He answered, already smiling and only half sarcastic, and the two go away without another comment, leaving Audra to watch after them.  George doesn't look hurt or angry or any of the other things that Audra was afraid he would be, but he did look rather glad to dump her in a chair beside Ginny and hand her a picture of the happy couple before coming back to where she was standing.

Audra doesn't mention it.  She hadn't known how to mention it, not after that first night with him on the couch where he looked at her and saw the truth of how relieved she was that it was George lying there instead of Fred.  It is one thing to know that you're coming in second and quite another to look at your best friend and see that she was glad that you were the one who was injured, and they both know it.

"Don't listen to her.  You look fine.  Better than fine."  Audra was stumbling through the words, which was a new thing, too.  She used to know exactly what to say to make both of the twins feel better, whether it was about bad grades or one of the Slytherins giving them a hard time, but the problems they're facing now are so much more upsetting and so very complex, she doesn't know how to even begin to untangle the web of emotions that each of them are facing.  Her only comfort is that they seem just as lost when it comes to making her feel better.  "You look good, George."

George smiles, shakes his head, and squints into the sun.  He opens his mouth to respond but then Fred, Ron, and Harry are there, Harry tugging at his too tight robes uncomfortably.  He's disguised as another freckle red head, but something about the way he's moving let's her know immediately that it was him, or maybe that was just how close he was sticking to Ron.

"What's this?"  Fred clings to her, drawing her in to press a kiss down to her temples.  Around her waist, his arm was tight, his hand pressing down hard onto her hip, and something about his voice was tight.  "Complimenting someone that isn't me?  Who do I need to duel?"

Audra laughs but doesn't feel it.  She wants to explain ( _and it's ridiculous, really, that she feels the need to explain herself, this was her and George, they've never needed any explanation_ ), but that would mean bringing up both what Aunt Muriel had said and the missing ear, both of which are subjects best avoided around any of the Weasley's, because both are equally likely to bring them all to tears.

"It was nothing."  George's voice was too quiet, his words too short, and when she looks over at him, he's got a hand raised to the side of his head, ruffling his hair so it lies down against the missing ear.  "She's just mad about Muriel."

"Oh."  Fred's grip loosens, just a bit, and he cranes his neck around her to look at George.  "You alright?"

George doesn't answer for a moment.  They're reading each other, she knows, in the way that she had sat and watched them do for years.  It used to make her jealous, the way that they could look at each other and know what the other is thinking, that she would always be out of the loop.  And it used to make her sad, because she knew that she would never have a person in her life that understood her like that.  But now, she's just glad that they have each other, and by the time George speaks up again, they seem to have sorted it out.

"Course I am," He says, crooked smile on his face, and when she looks at him, it's such a convincing lie that even Audra can't tell if he's pretending.

 

  
  


The wedding, like all weddings are bound to be, was beautiful.

Audra doesn't sit with the rest of the Weasley's.  Fleur had wanted her to, and bristled at the suggestion that Audra was anything less than family to her, but Bill had calmed her down, with Molly awkwardly explaining about security risks and recognizable faces.  _No threats have been made of course.  And the ministry has no reason to want to arrest her. And everyone knows about her and Fred and her involvement with the order. But,_ Molly had looked like she was going to burst into tears, and whatever resistance Audra might have had against the decision fizzled out.  _There's no need to flaunt her in front of everyone, is there?_

Still, it was a bit disappointing not to be able to sit between Fred and George to watch the wedding like she had been planning.  Instead, she's in the back, tucked behind Hagrid and off to the right, where no one would notice her unless they were looking.  The words were a little faint, and she didn't hear Muriel's muttering that the others recounted to her later, but she did get to see the wink that Ginny threw her way, and could make out the way the sunlight sparkled off of Fleur's tiara, and she knew without even seeing that Molly had cried through the whole ceremony, probably out of relief as much as everyone else.

"Hey."  Fred comes to find her before anything else, even though George and Harry and the rest of the Weasley's had gone to their designated corners to help do the last minute transformations on the yard.  In less than a moment they were standing in the middle of a great white tent, trays of champagne suspended in mid air whirling around them and music floating towards them from the stage that Bill and Charlie had made appear out of nowhere.  "You good?"

That's how they always started conversations now.  Always hurried, always worried, always the first thing on both of their minds- _are you alright, are you hurt, are you okay_ \- but Audra does not have the patience for that now.

"Did you cry?"  She was teasing him.  "I know how much you love weddings."

"I didn't cry."  He accepted the dodging of the question gamely, and his arm went back around her waist.  She knows that he wanted her to be disguised as a Weasley like Harry, and she knows it makes him nervous to have her in the middle of all these people when the Dark Lord most likely has a kill order on her head.  It was sweet of him to worry, but there wasn't a thing he could save her from that was too dangerous for her to take care of on her own.  "The girls did.  Could you hear mum?  Sniffled her way through the whole thing.  Women," He says, rolling his eyes as he snags two glasses of champagne for them, but his tone was fond.  "Can't take you ladies anywhere."

Audra opens her mouth the respond, but turns when something pokes her in the side.

"You." It's Muriel, still clutching that purse, leaning over on her cane. "Wouldn't want to show a poor lady to a chair, would you?" Audra knew it wasn't a question, not that she was likely to leave her standing on her own. Muriel looked like she was only moments away from falling over. "All these idiots just left me sitting out in the sun. One of them had promised to come back and get me after the ceremony." George, probably, but Audra didn't offer that information, just gave Muriel her arm and sent Fred an apologetic smile. "I'd go beat him with my cane if I could remember which one it was. They all look so much alike. Red heads," She continued, sounding disgusted at the prospect, and then eyed Audra's own hair thoughtfully. "Such a disgusting color, but yours."

Muriel reached out to pick at a curl that had fallen loose on Audra's shoulder, and didn't say anything else.

"Well, I'm not a Weasley. I'm a-,"

"A Stanton. I know who you are. Knew the moment I saw you standing there with my great nephew. I've been reading about your family for ages." Muriel settles herself down in the chair and snaps her fingers at a passing Weasley, who gives up her own champagne glass without a moment's hesitation. "Always on the front of all the papers, your family was."

Audra doesn't know what to say about that. "Not so much anymore. And I don't see my family very often, so-,"

She means to extract herself from the conversation, go back and stand with the twins and amuse herself by talking about how awful their aunt is, but Muriel doesn't let her get that far. "Seeing as half of them are dead, don't know how you would." There's something about how casual the words were that knocked the wind out of her. Audra half wanted to hit her but settled for gripping onto the back of the chair instead, feeling like the world was tilting beneath her feet. Other than a few whispered words from Mrs. Weasley, no one had mentioned her mother's death out loud since the day she found out. "And from the way the wind is blowing, your father won't be far behind."

"Don't talk about them," Audra said, once she had found her voice. "You don't know-," It was the first time she was at a loss for words, and it took effort to keep her voice hushed in order to not make a scene. "You don't know anything about me, so just-," Muriel was staring at her with an eyebrow raised. It was hard to seem in control when it was clear that the other person found your outburst amusing. "Just be quiet."

"But I do know you. And your family. I heard the stories." Muriel drained her glass. "I like stories very much, and people like to tell them to me. Interesting, the way your family dies. You'd start to think that someone is at fault."

"And who would that be, Muriel?"

"I don't know, dear." She struggled to her feet, gripping onto the back of the chair and the cane both, and started hobbling off to another table, probably to ruin another poor person's day. "The story doesn't seem to be over yet."  
  
  


 

 

Fred doesn't ask before dragging her onto the dance floor, just pulls the empty champagne glass from her hand and steers her away from the Weasley she was talking to, only letting go of her hand when they're at the center of the floor.

"That was rude," Audra says, but without any bite.  "I was talking to one of your cousins."

"I don't even know who he is, I doubt we'll see him again."  His words were dismissive, but he was smiling, still teasing.  Still in a good mood.  "Besides, he wasn't doing much talking, just drooling all over you."

Audra smiled back.  "Jealous much?"

"Very.  Don't you know me at all?"  Fred twirls her in a circle, and she catches a flash of Ron and Hermione, Ron looked slightly panicked and Hermione with her head resting on his shoulder.  It was the first time she had seen Hermione where she didn't look on the verge of a complete mental break down.  "All I'm saying is he won't be invited to our own wedding.  Anyone who ogles the bride is not allowed through the doors."

Audra snorts.  "Planning ahead, are we?"

"A bit."  Fred's smile was a bit sheepish, but he didn't look sorry.  "You're telling me that you haven't thought about it?"

She hadn't, honestly, not that she was about to tell that to Fred.  It wasn't that she didn't want it, or that she ever expected there was going to be a time where either of them wanted to leave the other, but the world she had been living him hadn't been one where you get happy endings.  And it certainly hadn't been one where you sat around planning your wedding, but this one could be.

"Not much.  I just always assumed it would happen."  They're drifting further and further to the edge of the dance floor, closer to the musicians, and the swell of the instruments is so loud that she's confident that no one around them would be able to hear.  "And there's so much missing, now, that even if I had- we'd have to rewrite the whole thing."

She hadn't thought about that, either, but Audra supposed it was true.  One of her bridesmaids was gone, and the other will have to kill her if she ever sees her again.  Her brother wasn't here, and her father wasn't going to be able to walk her down the aisle.  They weren't going to be able to rent out some fancy building, either, or take over a muggle church- it would just have to be here, with whatever friends they had left by the time this bloody war is over.

"So?"  Fred's voice is loud in her ear.  "Since when do any of our plans work out?"

"Some of them do."  Audra's voice is just as quiet as his.  "We're here.  Together.  And you love me.  I think that worked out pretty well."

"Aren't you going to mention how much you love me?"

"I could.  But you know I do."  Audra let's him spin her again, and when they come back together, she is standing much closer to him than was technically decent.  "There was never any question about me loving you."

"And me?  You thought there was a chance that I might not love you?"  He's halfway through a laugh when he looks down and catches sight of her face, and then he stops dancing entirely, crouching a bit to tilt her face up so she has no choice but to look at him.  "Of course I love you."

"I only thought," She says, and she thinks to herself that if only he would tell her this one last time, she would be able to believe him.  "With everything that's happened... everything I've done."

"How many times," He says, voice hoarse and cracking and the words hanging in the air like they ached, "Do I have to tell you I love you before you actually believe me?"

Audra smiles, leans in, and is about to answer- say something funny, something sweet, maybe change the direction of the conversation entirely and suggest that they sneak away for a little bit- but then the dance floor breaks apart, a patronus gliding through to sink down to the floor, Kingsley's voice ripping through the crowd, and all she can do is hold him a bit tighter as the guests begin to scream.  
  
  


_Scridgmour is dead.  The ministry is falling.  They are coming,_ Kingsley voice said, and the normally calming effect he normally had was lost in the face of the message he was bringing them.  _They are coming._

The reaction was instant- screams, first, either names or cries or wordless explanation of disbelief, and then the faint popping of people apparratting, and then, the worst, the sudden appearance of both ministry personnel and death eaters appearing in the middle of the floor, grabbing onto whoever happens to be standing next to them.

"Ginny," Fred breathes, and takes off in the direction of where she had been standing.  Audra tries to follow him, darting around Hermione's outstretched hand and following the flash of red as he weaves through the crowd to get to his little sister, until an arm wraps around her waist and hauls her back.  

"Let go!"  She doesn't think of using her wand, she just kicks back, the heel of her shoe connected with someone's shin.  The person doesn't let go and she takes in a strangled breath, one of her arms flailing at their head, and it's only when she hits against where his ear should be that she realizes it's George.

"You need to leave."  Fred was always panicked before a fight, but George was steady, his wand pointed out in front of him and one of his hands on her shoulder. 

"No."  There was a bitter taste in her mouth, and it took a moment for Audra to realize that it was blood.  She had bit her lip when George grabbed her, and now blood is trickling down her chin.  "Are you crazy?  I'm not leaving you behind."

 _I'm not leaving anyone behind,_ she thinks wildly, _but not you, and not Fred._

"You can't be here."  He's yanking on her arm and part of her sleeve rips.  "The ministry doesn't exist anymore, he'll have the entire wizarding world looking for you, and then it won't just be Harry that they're after when they come for us, it'll be you, too."  Audra realizes it as soon as he does.  "If they see you here we're all as good as dead."

"Where do I go?"  She doesn't have the answers.  Doesn't have a clue.  It seems a large gap in their security measures, to think of everything but where she should hide if the death eaters come calling.   They had always assumed that it would be an ambush, or a fight to the death, not the ministry come knocking on their door.  "George."

He doesn't know, either. 

"The woods.  Where the tree house was.  I'll find you, okay?"  He's got his hands on her, still, and it seems to hurt him to push her away from him.  Audra stumbles, the hem of her skirt ripping under her feet, but then she is running again, heading out towards the corn fields, not even daring to look over her shoulder to see if anyone was following her.


	9. Aunt Muriel's

She doesn't stop running for a long time.

Audra made it to the edge of the cornfield before turning around, giving one last glance before she plunged into the middle fo the corn stalks, and even that glance was enough to make her itch to go back- the tent was tumbling to the ground, collapsing in on the tables and chairs, and the guests that were left were being lined up at the edge of the lawn, forced onto their knees with their hands behind their head, and she can catch sight of someone that must be Ginny, her flaming hair whipping around her head and golden dress glittering as she fights. It was taking two of them to push her over to the lawn with the other, and Audra could hear Molly screaming the whole time, begging them not to hurt her, to please not hurt her baby girl.

As far as she can tell, Harry is not there, or Ron, or Hermione. If they had been, she doesn't think she could stop herself from going back for them.

But they weren't there, which meant that George was right- there was nothing she could do for them, no way to protect them, and if she did go back, that would only give the death eaters reason to drag them all in for questioning, and Merlin only knows if they would let any of them back out again.   Maybe Voldemort would keep all of them, just so she knew it was her fault.  Mad-Eye hadn't been lying- the Dark Lord wants her, and he wants her to hurt.

 _The tree house,_ she thinks, turning and running instead of going towards the twins like she wants to, the mud splashing up through the gaps in her heels.  It doesn't take long before her dress is ripped and muddy, and her legs are covered in mud up to her thighs.  Audra had been trained to fight in any situation, but she wasn't much good at running, let alone running through a muddy cornfield in a dress and high heels.  _Just get to the tree house and he'll come find you there._

It takes her hours, long enough that the light fades until it really is the middle of the night.  There's no moon, which leaves her to pick her way through the edge of the cornfield by memory, dashing across the clearing until she's under the cover of the trees again.  She's got her wand clutched in her hand, her clutch having been abandoned somewhere in the middle of the field.  Her hair, which Ginny had painstakingly curled and pinned up with the emerald studded pins that Audra's grandmother gave her, had come undone and was curling up against her neck, plastered to her skin with sweat and mud.

She didn't look like someone who could fight, or someone who used to be beautiful.  She just look scared, probably.  Scared, and lost, and alone, standing in the clearing beside the skeleton of what used to be a falling apart tree house, hoping that one of the twins would come to find her, with no way to tell if they really would.  
  


 

  
  


It takes them until sunrise.

Audra had finally given up on thinking it was going to be a short wait and had sat down on a fallen tree, using her wand to cut away the ragged edges of her dress.  By the time anyone did come for her, she was drifting in and out of sleep, her wand held loose in the palm of her hand, jerking back away every time she heard so much as the rustle of the leaves.

"Audra!"  The voice is too loud in the quiet, and female.  Definitely not the twins.  "Audra, are you here?"

Audra stood up and circled around the trees, coming up behind whoever was standing in the middle.  "Don't move."  She had her wand pointed at the back of their neck, and she knew that they could feel it.  "Turn, slowly, with your arms up."

"It's me."  Tonks turned, one arm stretched out to her, placating, and the other covering her stomach.  "They sent me to find you.  The twins had to go home, they couldn't come back- the entire family is being watched, now, but he said-,"

"Shut up."  Audra jabbed her wand a little harder, this time at her throat, and she could see Tonks swallow.  "Prove it."  Her breath was coming out in ragged little bursts, like it had been when she was running, and she could feel every muscle in her body tensing up, getting ready for a fight.  She would like a fight, she thinks.  "How do I know it's really you?"

"It's me." There weren't any tears in her eyes.  There wasn't any panic, either.  She had probably done this a million times before, talked some bad guy off the edge before he did something stupid.  "My mother named me Nymphadora, I'm an anamigus, I like when my hair is pink, I'm married to the werewolf Remus Lupin,"

"Not good enough," Audra trilled, correcting her grip on the wand, pulling back just a little.

"My mother and father's house was used as a safe house for Harry.  They crashed into the edge of the garden, right into the fish bond.  You were worried because they came back first, and then Ron and me, even though it should have been Fred first.  He only came back after George, and he didn't have time to run to you, because his brother," Tonks swallowed hard again, and Audra knew that she would stand here for as long as it took, rattling off name after name, the whole order of that night.  "You wanted to go get Mad-Eye's body.  But George asked you to stay.  And you love both of those boys, so you stayed."

Audra sighed and dropped her wand, then thought better of it and raised it again.  "You weren't followed?"

"No."  Tonks rubbed the spot at her neck where Audra had kept jabbing at her and glared reproachfully.  "I'm an auror.  These things are sort of my job.   I'm just as good as you are, you know."

"Sorry."  She still didn't drop her wand.  "Is everyone all right?"

"Most everyone got out before they came.  It was just order members who stayed, and the Weasley's, which was..." Tonks sighed and sat down on the log, and after a moment, Audra followed her lead.  "Stupid.  We should have been the ones to go first, certainly Remus.  Harry, Ron, and Hermione had already left, and they were angry about that when they were questioning them-,"

"The Dark Lord probably told them that he's Harry's best friend."  Audra dug her nails into her palms.  "He's probably who they wanted the most, besides Harry."

"Or you.  They wanted you, too.  It seemed like they wanted to tear the house apart to get to either of you, but then George stepped forward and told some lie about Ron having spattergroit and I thought he lost his damn mind, because that's such a stupidly obvious lie to prove wrong, but-,"

"But then they showed the troll and no one wanted to come close."  Audra said, and took a deep breath to calm herself.

"Yes.  Exactly.  And then they left.  But we aren't stupid."  Tonks shook her head again.  Her hair had gone grey, like the shock of today had drained all the color away.  "They're watching us."

"They won't stop watching."  Audra got up and started to pace, unable to sit still any longer.  She wanted to go back to the Burrow.  She wanted it to be Fred here instead of Tonks, and she wanted to be with Harry, Ron, and Hermione, and she wanted to go back to Malfoy Manor and rip all those useless death eaters apart with her bare hands, but she couldn't have any of that.  "The Dark Lord would think that's the first place that Harry would run to if he got in trouble."

"You know," Tonks said, in a tone that was almost conversational but didn't quite make it, and Audra was reminded of the fact that even if Remus had forgiven her, Tonks had made it clear on multiple occasions that she doesn't think anyone crossed the lines that Audra had should be allowed to just walk away.  "I've only ever heard death eaters talk about him that way.  The Dark Lord, and all that."

"I was a death eater," Audra said, the words falling out of her mouth like she couldn't quite believe she was saying them, stunned.  "That's what I called him."

"Was."  Tonks stare back at her was level, and the roots of her hair was changing colors again, just the faintest blue, like cotton candy.  "You think you would have broken the habit."

"He likes to be respected.  That's the first rule you learn."  Audra wasn't going to back down from this.  She wasn't sure how long she was going to have to keep trying to prove that she was on their side, but she knew that she wasn't ever going to stop fighting for people to see the truth.  "It's a pretty hard thing to forget, his rules."

"Maybe.  Regardless," Tonks looked away first and the moment broke, and she heaved herself up from the log, wincing as she did so.   "We've got to get you out of here.  They'll be expecting me home soon.  I made some show of visiting my parents, and Remus is at home, but-" She seemed to realize she was rambling and offered Audra a smile.  It seemed to take a little effort, but at least she was trying.  "Anyways.  Let's get you somewhere safe, alright?"

 

 

  
  


"Somewhere safe," as it turned out, was Fred's Aunt Muriel.

Audra hadn't fought when she realized where Tonks was taking her, but she didn't ever say thank you to her, and she didn't return the smile when Tonks told her that it was all going to work itself out.  She tried to tell herself that the fact that everyone was safe was the most important thing, but it was hard not to feel bad for yourself when you were left to the mercy of a surly one-hundred year old woman while everyone you love was out risking their necks.  Not to mention that everything in the house either smelled strongly of mold or was so expensive that Audra was afraid to go near it.  Fred and George weren't kidding when they said their aunt was rich.

"You can put your things in there."  Aunt Muriel hobbled around the room, flicking her wands to light the lamps and yanking blankets out of drawers.   She rapped her cane on a set of drawers and on the closet, and they door flew open, revealing empty spaces with minimal amounts of dead bugs inside.  "We can move things around tomorrow if you need more room, but seeing as how filthy you look-," She curls her lip and Audra braces herself for something awful, but then Muriel's expression softens, and one wrinkled hand comes to wrest on the inside of Audra's wrist.  The touch is so unexpected that she almost flinches.  "Well, shower first, then food if you want it, then bed, I suppose.  We'll deal with everything else in the morning."

It's enough like the routine that Molly has her go through that Audra wants to cry.

"I haven't got any things."  She doesn't.  What she did have was borrowed, and all of that was sitting back at the Burrow.  "Don't even have a change of clothes."

"Well, look in the trunk, I'm sure they'll be something that will fit you."  Mariel tssked impatiently and then sat herself down on the bed, easing onto the covers like it hurt her to sit.  Maybe it did.  Audra had seen how much she relied on the cane.  "I know this isn't want you wanted, living with me.  You weren't what I wanted for tonight, either, if I'm going to be honest."  Audra didn't think there was a time where she wasn't honest.  "But it's what we've got.  And my nephews, as tedious as I find them, are family.  And family takes care of family, which, seeing as how important you seem to be to the both of them, means that you have a place in my home as long as you need it.  And you'll be safe here.  Nothing can get past the wards.  My husband put them up."  She says it with such confidence that Audra cannot help but relax.  "They've never broken yet."

Audra opens her mouth to say something (that she believes her, that she trusts her, to thank her), and Muriel pats her hand once, briskly, before struggling back to her feet and staring down at the carpet in distaste.  "I do believe you've tracked mud in here," She announces, and Audra sucks in a breath, staring down at the carpet, which was spotless except for the few specks of mud that had fallen from her dress.  "Clean that up before the stain sets, won't you?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> big shout out to my most recent reader, gotoheaven666, and also remifoster1313, who has stuck with me for a very long time and never forget to give me feedback, no matter how sporadic I become with my updates!!
> 
> Also, ANNOUNCEMENT:
> 
> I do have an entirely new Instagram account, so if you were following my old one, that one doesn't exist anymore. You'll have to go to @olive.writes.fanfic on Instagram to keep updated on me and my writing. Also, if you want to see what my OCs in this story look like, follow the link below to check out some aesthetics I made on pinterest.
> 
> https://www.pinterest.com/olive_writes_fanfic/the-potion-princess/


	10. Fred

She'd been at Muriels for nine days before anyone comes to visit her.

"They're fine," Muriel kept saying, every time she saw Audra glance towards the window for an owl during dinner or she started looking at all the fine china lining the walls like she wants to smash it.  "I promise, Audra, they're all alright.  I would know if they weren't."

Audra doesn't want to be ungrateful, but that hadn't stopped her from not accepting her reassurances, either.  She knows how easy it can be to make someone hurt without anyone knowing how much pain they were in, how simple it can be to change every fundamental thing about a person without even their closest family members being able to notice that something inside them had shifted and snapped.  It's amazing, what can be done with a wand and a little bit of creativity, if you didn't mind the screams.

"I know," She had said, each and every time that Muriel had tried to tell her that everything was fine, knotting her fingers in the table cloth or tapping at the glass of the china cabinets until Muriel rapped her about the shins with her cane.  "I would know if they weren't."

 _You would think so,_ Muriel had said, the last time they had gone through the script.  They had been sitting in the living room, Muriel sunk back into one of the chairs with exhaustion biting deep into the lines of her face and Audra pouring them tea that neither of them would drink, listening to the official ministry report about the raid on the Weasley wedding.  It was mostly crap, but there was a few good bits of information- Mr. Weasley returned to work, the shop was still open for business, Mrs. Weasley, as usual, declined all comment.  _I thought that, too, that I would know somehow, if something would happen to him.  But you don't.  There's no magic for that, no matter how much you love each other._

 _It doesn't make you special, how much you care about him._ Muriel had reached out to her, put her own hand in Audra's even when she was trying to pull away.  _It's just going to make you hurt._

"Audra?"  Audra's starts in her place at the window seat, the book she was reading sliding from her lap and falling to the floor.  Muriel had given her the room at the highest end of the house.  It was meant to give Audra enough space to call her own and also to help Muriel avoid going up the stairs as much as possible, but it also gave her the added affect of being able to see down over the hill, the perfect defensive position for a look out.  "Audra, someone's hear to see you!"

It frightened her, even though she had known from seeing the death eaters pacing at the ward lines that no one was able to come anywhere close to the house without being in on the secret keeper charm.  There was something unsettling about knowing that even if there was no way for them to reach her, they all knew exactly where she was at.  It's like the fish at the aquarium that everyone bothers despite the sign saying not to touch the glass.

"For me?  Who is it, Muriel?"  She took the steps two at a time and jumped over the last three, wand in hand, the impact of her footsteps making the plates lining the wall rattle in their stands.  Fast and defensive was the only way Audra walks anywhere, anymore, even around the house, no matter how many times Muriel had begged her to lighten her steps, claiming that she was going to crack all of her glassware if she kept trampling around like an elephant.

"Muriel?"  She called again, rounding the corner, and then stopped dead.  "Fred."

"Hey."  He's wearing jeans with a hole worn through in the knee and a tattered flannel that had been through the wash too many times, and there was a tightness about his face that hadn't been there at the wedding, like he had lost a noticeable amount of weight since she last saw him, and it sends a pang through her, that they had been apart long enough for her to be able to notice all these little changes.  But still, it's him, and he's _here,_ and he's holding out his arms so she can run into them, like he's strong enough to hold her up if she wants to fall apart.  "You miss me?"

 

 

  
  


She does not, as it turns out, run into his arms.  Instead, she shoves Muriel behind her and holds her wand out between them, even though every part of her is screaming at her that this is real, that this is Fred and she knows it, that she would know if this was someone pretending to be him, that she can be _happy_ for once, but she can also hear Muriel's voice in her head, brittle and broken and still mourning someone she had lost long before Audra knew what it was like to love someone as much as she does- _You think you would know.  Think loving him like you do makes you special.  But it doesn't.  You won't._

Fred doesn't seem alarmed.  "I'm Fred Weasley," He says, still holding that ridiculous position, like he cannot think of anything more enjoyable than staring at his girlfriend when she's on the verge of hexing him.  "Twin of George Weasley, now officially the handsome one, since he lost his ear.  I haven't seen you since the wedding, where the nasty old death eaters invaded and George had to tell you to hide in the tree house and Tonks got sent to get you instead of me, which upset me, because I love you more than anything in this world.  The last time I was in the house, I put beetles in Bill's soup and-,"

Audra didn't wait for him to say anymore, just dropped her wand, letting it hang loosely at her side, and in the end, it was Fred who crossed through the hallway and came to her, wrapping her in a hug and letting her clutch at his shirt.  "You're okay," He says, easing the wand from between her fingers and letting it lay on the dining room table, burying his face in his neck, and she does not know which one of them is the one being comforted.  "I'm okay.  We're all okay."

"You promise?"  She cannot get Muriel's words out of her head, how even though they tell themselves that they will make it through this just because they are in love and they will win because they are the good guys and that is how stories are supposed to end, that self assurance is just the feeling of being young and never having lived long enough to know what it's like to lose.  "You're all alright?  Ginny, George, your parents?  Everyone?"

Fred's smile is soft.  Audra's never seen him smile like this at anyone other than her.  "And the happy couple, too."  He lets out a shuddering breath and stares around the room, wrinkling his nose like it pains him to be back here, then reaches out to tug on one of the stray pieces of hair that had come out of her braid, just like he used to do when they were kids and she wasn't paying him enough attention.  "We're all safe."

 

  
  


There wasn't much to do in Muriel's house.  She gives him the tour, including Muriel's drawer of old coupons that expired three years ago and refuses to throw away, and she throws open the door of her room to let him look at the teddy bear and roses covered wall paper, but eventually, she gets tired of Muriel yelling after them to be quiet and leads him back out to the shed.

"I should have known."  Fred shakes his head and drags his finger across one of the jars that was stacked on the shelves, leaving a trail through the grime.  Audra couldn't tell what was in it ( _it had been there when she got there, and though it looked like purple slime, Muriel said she thought it might be some sort of byproduct, and Audra had been confused and wary enough by that explanation just to let it sit_ ), but she liked the look of all the jars lining the walls.  "You've been here a week and already have yourself a little potions hide out."

Audra turned away from him, smiling as she measured out the armadillo bile that Muriel''s house elf had gotten her that morning.  "I have to practice."  It's a tight space, and every time she walks around the table to reach for a new ingredient he's in her way,  making her reach around him to get what she needs and dragging him by the collar to move aside so she has room to walk.  It's a nuisance, and slowing her down, and she loves it.  "Can't be rusty when it's time for me to help you guys with the shop."

"When you go back to school, you mean."

Audra stops, eyeing him over the rim of her cauldron.  "You were the one who skipped out early.  I graduated, remember?"

"I know, but," He scratches at the back of his neck and looks away from her, drawing more lines into the dust.  It looks vaguely like a smiley face, but she's pretty sure he'll turn it into something rude in a moment.  "There's those potion masters.  The technical school in Bulgaria?"

"Fred."  She had thought about it, once, in their fifth year.  They had been in the early stages of the skiving snackboexes and instead of making a potion that made them sick, she had accidentally turned it into a potion that could cure skin diseases.  Audra had taken into Madame Pomfrey to have her test it, and within the month, Audra was on the cover of three different potions magazines and had it patented by the ministry.  It was record breaking.  Dumbledore himself said so.  "Don't."

"I mean it."  His eyes are shining, his voice growing, and she can recognize the tone of it from all those nights sprawled out in the second floor bathroom with Myrtle moping over their heads.  It was his idea voice, his "everything is going to work out just because it's us" voice.  She missed that voice.  "You can do whatever you want and I'll support you but- I know how smart you are, how good you are at this.  And you love it, more than anything else I've ever seen you do.  I know things have gotten in the way, but," He knots their hands together, pulls her close, and the light from the window is streaming over his face, throwing every freckle and stray hair and early laugh line into sharp relief.  "You loved this once.  More than anything.  And you were so brilliant- you might as well get licensed and make it official, yeah?  It'd open so many more doors for you."

It would, and she knows it.  The people who graduate from schools like that are experts, freelancers for businesses  and witnesses called in for the ministry, and have a basically open avenue into any academic journal that they want to write for.  Graduating from there wouldn't mean that she was good, it would mean that she was the best.

( _Ivy League,_ Hermione would call it, but Hermione isn't here.)

"I don't know." She used to know.  She used to think that she could barrel her way through anything life puts in front of her, just by virtue of who her family was.  It was a false and flimsy promise.  "I don't know if I could get in-,"

"You could,"

"The cost alone, Fred."  She wasn't used to having these sorts of conversations, about what she could afford.  She used to buy whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, without looking at a single price tag.  "My parents money isn't mine anymore, the ministry will take it for reparations, and who knows if I'll be able to get into my Gringotts vault without my father allowing me access to the mansion?"  For old money families, possessions are passed down by blood magic.  It's a way to keep things within the family, the pure family, where if a descendant had been tainted with muggle born blood, they wouldn't be recognized as part of the family.  The catch to that is that you can remove people from the list, too, like Sirius' parents did to him and Audra's father did to her. 

( _The ministry had called her to identify her mother's body.  They couldn't move it without it crumbling, so it had to be done at the scene, but when Audra tried to get into the house, the door wouldn't let her through.  She had pushed and pulled and almost thrown her shoulder out with the effort, but from the moment it stayed locked to her touch, everyone watching knew what had happened. Her father had barred her from the house.  He had removed her from the home, from her inheritance, from her claim to the Stanton name.  He had disowned her._ )

"Screw your father," Fred said, fiercely.  He had held her that night when she cried, both for the loss of her mother and her father, and for the fact that she would never know which one of them did it.  It had been her mother's family home, after all, and the thought won't go away, that it was her mother's last dying wish to make sure her daughter could never return.  "You're the only one who gave their name any meaning, the rest of them were worthless-,"

"The only money I had belonged to them."  She would leave this war as a criminal, with no home and no social standing and no galleons.  "And now it's going to stay with them, in their vault, until the ministry or some distant cousins claim it.  Even if the ministry wants me to have it as recompense," Arthur had tried to tell her that the ministry would make a special exception for the things she had done, but Bill, who had worked at Gringotts and knew the rules better than anyone in the room, had just shaken his head at her.  "I won't get it.  Which means no Bulgarian potions school."

"I'll pay for it."  Fred jumps up on the counter, leans back, resting his weight on his palms. 

"Don't be stupid-,"

"I mean it."  He leans forward, reaches out to catch at her arms, pulls her head around to make her look at him and keeps his hand on her cheek.  "I have the money."

"It costs so much."

Fred raises an eyebrow at her.  "I have _a lot_ of money."

"I  can't let you do that.  I'm not," She didn't know what she was.  "That's so much, Fred.  Too much."

"I want to do this.  To pay for it, take care of you, whether that means this school or rent or groceries or a house for the two of us," He pounds his fist onto the tabletop and dust flies into the air between them.  "This is forever for me.  Us, you- this is it.  I love you.  Besides," She had leaned into him, her forehead pressed against his collar bone, and he's got his hands winding through her hair.  Audra can't see him, but she can hear the smile in his voice.  "You can always pay me back, once you get to be a super famous potions master."

"Fred," She tries to move out of his grip, but he doesn't letter, so she tugs on his wrist until he lets her lean back.  "Did you mean it?"

"That I love you?"  His forehead wrinkles, and she can hear the old reassurances and protests coming, even though that wasn't what she was asking about.  "Or that I want to take care of you?"

"No.  The bit about the house."  He shifts and his arm slides loose from her, but she picks it back up, winding their fingers together.  "Our house."

"Yeah."  He's got that soft smile again.  "I meant it."

"You've thought about it?"  Somehow, she never had.  She just always assumed they would end up together, and the other details weren't so important.  But clearly he had.  "That far ahead?"

"Not so far ahead.  It's just a house.  With a yard.  And a kitchen big enough that we don't need to put a tent outside for family dinners."  He pulls her back to him and she follows without protest, jumping up on the counter beside him to lean her head on his shoulder.  "And a dog.  I know you always wanted a cat, but I think we can have both."

"And a spare room for George.  Or for Ron, for when Hermione throws him out."  It's nice to think about.  "And a work room for you, and a garage for the potions."

"And mum's Afghans thrown everywhere.  And a bunch of mugs so we can have coffee with whoever wants to come over and talk to you, since one of us will probably be working from home at least a few days a week."  He bumps his knee against hers.  "It'll be happy."

"I want the walls to be blue," She said suddenly.  "Can one room be blue?"

"Sure.  Whatever you want."  He presses a kiss down to the top of her head and gets up, moving over to the window, closing the shutters with a squeak, cutting off their view of the death eater keeping watch at the end of the driveway.  "We only need to get through the war first."

"Yeah."  It feels like he had doused her with cold water, or shaken her from a day dream that she was trying to cling onto.  "Only."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come find me on Instagram @olive.writes.fanfic


	11. Borgin

The Order is sliding.

Audra can see it happening, wants to tell them to stop.  Wants to warn them that even though the stories make things like this sound so black and white, a clear cut right and wrong, this is all grey, an endless grey void where you cannot see that you have crossed the line until you have already done it.  Wants to tell them that _for the greater good_ is not good enough. 

But she doesn't.

There is nothing else for them to do, and besides- they already know.

"Remus."  Molly is standing with her threadbare apron, the one that Ron and the twins and Percy had scraped together their pocket money to buy her for Mother's Day when they were younger.  It has sun flowers all over it, though the pattern is now hardly recognizable.  "You can't mean that."

Remus doesn't answer, just shakes his head, fingers curling around the back of Tonk's chair with white knuckles.  His fingernail are warped and twisted, bent and blackened, and Audra remembers something that Fenrir had told her once, that if you don't embrace it, the change is the most exquisitely painful thing that can be brought upon another human being, that the only way to make it survivable is to give into the urge inside you.

 _That's why you don't scare me, Princess._ That had been his name for her.  It was always whispered, always so close that she could smell his rancid breath and feel it hot on her neck, where she could see the flecks of blood still caught in his beard.  He had always treated her with a rare reverence that he shows no one else- even to the Dark Lord there was no real respect, only a dull a sense of duty, the attitude of a servant towards a master that they cannot bring themselves to love but cannot break free of.  _Nothing you could do can ever come close._

 _The people you turned,_ she had said, bristling, aware, as always, that this was a man who liked killing in a way that no other human being she had met has- likes it messy, likes it bloody, likes to be able to taste it.  It was a compulsion with him more than it was a means to an end.  It was one thing to be good at killing, and it was another to enjoy it, and often the two things make very different beasts.  _The children,_ and she had been thinking of Remus, of his face when he choked down the goblet of potion that Snape used to bring him, of the lines of pain that had started to gather in Tonk's face.  _Do you think they embrace it?_

Fenrir hadn't answered.   She can't tell which kind of strength she admires more- giving into the feral or holding out.  Even as someone who has done both, she cannot tell which one was harder, but she does know which one has more blood on their hands.

"He does have," Bill pauses, buries his face at his hands, and beside him, Aunt Muriel's hand twitched, like she is considering laying a comforting hand on his arm.  She was seated at the head of the table despite not being part of the order, because she had deemed them all able to have their meetings in her house, so as to keep anyone else from coming under any more unnecessary suspicion from the ministry.  Because of Audra, after all, they already had guards posted.  "Certain information that we need."

"Information that he isn't giving."  Fred leans back with more force than was necessary and the floorboards squeal underneath him.  One of his legs kick out and she can hear the resounding thud echo from where he hits the table.  "What are we going to do?"

"There are ways."  Remus had been the one to voice the thought that they had all been thinking.  It is easy to tell where the divide stands among them- Molly with her serving spoon dangling loosely from her fingers, Arthur with his glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose, Fred, Charlie, Damien, all of them never having to be the ones to make the hard decisions before.  And on the other side of the divide was Remus with his white knuckle grip, George with his hand unconsciously drawn to his missing ear, Tonks drumming her fingertips on the tabletop.   There had been so many of them to start, but now, with a third of their numbers cut away and most of what remains either under strict observation or on guard duty, they were so few.  "Things we do to make him talk."

"Torture."  Tonks lays a hand over her stomach.  "Call it what it is, Remus."

"Yes."  His adam's apple bobs as he swallows, and for the first time since he had spoke, Remus lifts his head to meet everyone staring back at him.  His hair is thinning and scars are etched across his face, but for a moment, Audra can see the echo of who he used to be, a boy who would have been surrounded by three other young men who thought themselves to be invincible, that their loyalty and will power would be enough to allow them to hold out against all the things that war brings- death, pain, betrayal, surrender.  "Torture."

There's a beat where no one speaks, and also a moment where everyone's eyes, whether consciously or unconsciously, flick to Audra.  She keeps her face blank and her arms still, but underneath the table, Fred's hand searches out hers, squeezes her fingers so tight that it hurts. 

"There's got to be another way."  Molly looks like she's going to be sick.  So does Fred, for that matter, but he's got his jaw clenched and Audra knows that he will not speak out against it. "Arthur." She turns to him for support, pleading, imploring, and Audra is hit with the thought that she had never seen her mother look at her father like that, is not sure whether it makes her sad or is just more proof of her mother's strength. "Arthur, tell them that we can't do this."

"Molly." He takes his glasses off, and without them, he seems so much older, so much more beaten down. Arthur scrubs at his eyes with the heels of his palms and then looks around the table, first at his wife, then searching out each of his sons. "We need to know whatever he can tell us. If we don't," He holds his palms out to the table, a vulnerable gesture, like he is hoping that the right answer would be waiting out in the air if only he would reach for it. "People will die. Good people. And Borgin," There are tears in his eyes and he scrubs at them again, looking down at the table so his family doesn't notice, but Audra saw. "He isn't a good man."

"So we decide who lives or dies?" She throws the spoon down on the table and slams the bowl that had been nestled in her arms down after it, sending mashed potatoes flying across the room. Bits of it splatters against Fleur's face. It would have comical in any other situation, but now, everyone is deathly quiet. "We're just going to execute whoever we think is guilty?"

"Merlin, mum." Bill runs his hands through his hair. He had cut it himself after Fenrir's attack, and the ends are ragged. "We're not going to murder him."

"Just torture him." Her voice is shaking, and Audra isn't sure if its from anger or from trying not to cry. "Just put him in so much pain he can't remember why he would want to keep it secret." Her face is flushed, an ugly contrast against her red hair. "If you do this, you are no better than them." She looks towards each of her sons first, and then the others ringing on the table, before finally coming back to her husband. "Don't become what you've spent your life fighting."

"Our son is out there, Molly." Arthur stands, his chair scraping back, the china cabinet rattling with the force of the motion. " _Ron_ is out there! Our youngest son." His voice breaks, quivering, and on either side of her, the twins are staring. "Our baby boy. If he knows something," Arthur cuts himself off abruptly and sits back into the chair like someone had knocked the legs out from underneath him. "I would give anything, _do_ anything, to make him come back to us. Do you understand?"

Molly was crying, tears slipping down her face, but she just shook her head, wordless, looking like she did not recognize the people in front of her. Audra knows the feeling.

"Now, the question remains, I think." Remus takes charge again. It is normally Kingsley that leads the meetings but he is not here, so Remus has taken it up in his stead. She thinks it is because authority fits him so well, or maybe because whatever was left of that boy who had believed in the promise of his own youth had been stripped from him a long time ago.  "Who?"  
  
  


There are no volunteers.  Audra isn't surprised- these people beside her are not always gentle but they are always, unfailingly, _good_ \- it was the one certainty in life that she could count on, their morality guiding her back home like a lighthouse in the storm. 

"No."  Audra shakes her head when Remus and Arthur come into the room. McGonagal follows them, heels clicking on the tile floor.  She thought she would be safe in here- Muriel never lets anyone into the kitchen, claiming that it was a place for servants, not for guests, never mind that she had dismissed all her servants after her husband died.  "Don't do it."

"Audra."  Remus holds his hands out to her, placating.  "No one's going to make you do something that you don't want to do."

"Yes you are."  She opens a drawer just to have something to do and then slams it shut again.  On the other side of the wall, the voices fall quiet, but she can hear them start up again, Fred's climbing over the rest.  She catches snatches of conversation, her name, and then Borgins, and then Remus closes the door.  "You always ask me to do something, and I can't say no, because if I don't, then people will die.  Because I'm the best, right?"  She laughs and the sound seems wild, even to her, and she remembers what Fenrir said about embracing what lies inside you, how it makes it less painful.  She wonders what his tipping point was.  Wonders what hers will be.  "You were all there the night that I went to Dumbledore and told him that I could help.  Tell me."  She turns to face each of them, and she wants to impress on them, somehow, how much she blames on them that they did not protect her, that the blame for the things she has done is laying at their feet, too.  "Is this where you thought we would end up?"

"You don't have to."  There's another burst of yelling from the dining room, and then the doorknob rattles, and then Muriels voice, yelling, telling them that under no circumstances will that man be brought to her house, under no circumstances will she have the stain of what they are about to do sunk into its foundation, and Audra knows.  Knows that they have already decided that it will be her, knows that she has already decided to say yes.  "I mean that."

"You ask me to do these things.  You ask me to do these things, and I do them," Audra feels like the room is titling around her, and she slumps back against the counter top, not sure why, after everything she had done, this is bothering her so much.  Maybe it was the idea that she really thought that she was done, or maybe that she had been beginning to think that she was safe.  "I do them and then you hate me for it."

"We don't hate you.  Audra, you don't have to do it."  Arthur's voice was kind.  So kind.  Always so much kinder than she deserves.  "No one would blame you."

"And who else would?  Who else would be able to go through with it?"  In the back of her mind, Audra always had this _thought_.  A worry that Dumbledore had let her done what she did not because he needed her to or because he thought she was the best for the job, but because he needed someone to turn into to this, needed someone to fall down the rabbit hole without any chance of clawing themselves back to the surface, just for moments like these.  Moments where they have to make the wrong choice for the greater good.  "It's only ever me."

"Then no one does it."  McGonagal's voice was sharp, her lips pressed into a thin line.  She steps forward and puts her arm around Audra's shoulders, glaring over the countertop at Remus, who was staring out the window.  He was watching the death eaters, Audra knows.  She watches them, too.  "Really, Remus, you should be ashamed of yourself."

"You don't have to."  It seems that Arthur had finally become ashamed of himself, too, and his voice comes out strangled.  "Audra, I'm sorry.  You don't have to.  We'll find another way."

"But Ron."  Audra's voice broke.  She had never seen her father cry, not until Vance, and she does not think that either of her parents would be willing to cry over her.  It was almost more painful to see Mr. Weasley cry than it was her real parents.  Audra doesn't want to think of what that says about her.  "Your son."

"But you.  Family is so much more than what they tell you it is.  And my sons love you.  So much."  His hand comes to cradle the side of her face, and there was no threat here.  With her own father, there was always the sense that he would only be standing at her side so long as she was able to give him the right answer, to impress the invisible audience with some sort of trick, even though he never gave her any clue as to what kind of performance he wanted to see.  With Arthur it was different- this was support, and love, the unconditional kind, the kind that she had never known was missing until she saw it with the Weasley's.  "My son might be lost to me already.  But you are still here."

Audra turns away, bending over the sink and counting to five in her head.  When she stands back up, her eyes are dry.

"Fine."  Dumbledore had chosen her.  Handpicked her, groomed her, just like he did Harry, but to very different ends.  He was the light.  She was the storm.  "Just tell me what you need to know."  
  
  
  


She's meant to do it three days from the meeting.

Fred comes to visit her on the second.

"George is downstairs keeping Muriel busy.  Some article came up in Witch Weekly about antique china and he's getting her to give him the tour of her china cabinets.   She won't notice we're up here for a while."  Fred had knocked on her door and called her name, but when she didn't answer, he had just walked into the room.  The mattress had dipped under his weight and then he was there, tugging gently on a stray curl that had fallen over her shoulder.  "You okay?"

Audra twists, and then rolls onto her back, turning her head so she can face him.  He'd gotten more freckles, or maybe it was just that he was so much more pale than normal.  "Do you think I'm okay?"  She props herself on one elbow.  "Really?"

"You mean is what you're doing okay?"  It wasn't what she meant, but Fred shakes his head, the tiniest bit, so she let's him go on.  "No.  But George does.  And I think you're doing it for all the right reasons, and I know a part of that is because you're always the one who has to make the hard choices to protect the rest of us, to take that choice away from us, and I'd be an idiot to think that a huge part of the reason you agreed isn't because of what Dad said about Ron, so...". He tugs at the curl again.  "I'm just trying to say thank you.  Thank you, for doing this not okay thing so the people I love can be okay."

 _I love them too,_ she thinks of saying, but instead she says, "What choice?"

"What?"  He sits up to look at her, and she follows him half heartedly for the sole purpose of dragging him back down.

"Choice.  You said making the hard choices."

"Between doing it or not doing it."  Fred fights with the edge of the comforter.  "To torture or not torture."

"To be or not to be."  That line used to be one of Clary's top choices for a tattoo.  Some muggle playwright said it.  "That is the question."

Fred barks out a laugh, because he recognizes the line, too,  but then goes quiet, because he knows she is thinking about Clary.  "Be serious."

"I am.  I'm just saying.  The rest of you saw a choice.  Good or bad.  I didn't.  I just saw a thing that had to be done."  Audra looks over at him again and her hair spreads out over the pillow.  "Does that make me a bad person?"

"It makes you strong.  It makes you a survivor."  Fred kisses the crook of her elbow, and then her shoulder, and then stops, pulling away from her and back to his side of the bed.  "It makes us  able to win this war, and not die doing it."

"Because I do the hard things."  They'd had this conversation so many times before, she knows all his lines.  "Make all the hard choices."

"Yes."

"And how many times," She starts, and swallows, blinking tears away, but they slip out of the corners of her eyes anyways. "How many times can I make the hard choice and you keep loving me, when you think they're so wrong?"

"I'll always love you. No matter what."

"Don't make promises you can't keep." She turns on her side, away from him, and he sighs. She can hear him, the hesitation, the moment where he thinks of leaving and decides to stay instead and she is so grateful for that, that he is the kind of man who is always willing to stay, even when it hurts more than leaving.

"You're not evil." He comes closer to her and then fits himself around her, wrapping an arm around her. She catches at it, presses it into her stomach like the pressure would be enough to convince her that he was going to stay. "You're a good person that has to do bad things, and you're the strongest person I know. We're going to get through this."

She would.

She has to.

She has no other choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come find me on Instagram @olive.writes.fanfic


	12. Chapter 12

Bill is the one who takes her.

She doesn't recognize the house.   Doesn't know whose home they were invading, if they still used it as a home, if it ever was or if the appearance was just an elaborate ruse to throw the death eaters off their scent.  She doesn't ask.

"Go down the hallway.  Third door to your left."  Bill swings the door open and then steps back, leaning against the wall of the house.  He's got a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth and wand hanging loosely from his fingers but Audra knows that it is just an act.  She can tell from the line of his shoulders, the stance of his feet, the way that his eyes were scanning the street.  He was as good a guard dog as any.  "He'll be in there."

"Does he know it's me?"

Bill shifts the cigarette from one side of his mouth to the other without touching it.  It's interesting to watch, and sort of disgusting, and probably just a tactic to stall for time.  "Don't know.  Don't know how much he's been told, or what he's guessed.  I was just the one to guide you here."

Not, of course, that they were in any real danger.  The wards around Muriels' home were impeccable, and there were only two death eaters, anyways.  It seems that the Dark Lord has gotten bored and hoped to lead her out instead.

Audra hesitates at the top step with her hand on the door knob.  Audra raises an eyebrow at her.  "You aren't coming in?"

He pivots and flicks the cigarette so ash filters down onto the mulch at his feet.  "Do you want me to?"

Audra thinks for a moment.  "No."  She shoves the door open, and the hinges squeak.  He would hear her coming.  Part of the condition of her doing this was that no one would watch.  "I really don't."

 

  
  


They have him ready for her.  He's in the middle of an empty room, and she can still see the lines in the dust where furniture used to stand.  Now, though, there is only Borgin, tied down onto a old wooden chair and a blindfold pulled tight across his face.  He heard her come in- his head snaps to the doorway when she walks in the room, and then he goes still as she circles him, flinching when she pulls off the blindfold.

"Borgin."  She waves her wand and he eyes her warily, but it only conjures another chair in the room, this one made of dark green leather.  It would look more in place in a library or a parlor room, but Audra likes it, likes being able to sink into it like its a throne and she's a queen.  "Miss me?"

He chokes on a laugh and blood spills out from a split lip.  "Miss Stanton.  I rather thought you'd be done with this sort of game."

Audra's mouth twitched into a smile.  Not many people liked Borgin, but she always had.  His flattery was fake and his prices were too high, but there was always something comforting in a man being blatant about his untrustworthiness, about the stability of being welcomed by the door's bell chime and a sardonic smile waiting for you at the counter.  And often, when she was sent on errands by Bellatrix or Narcissa or the Dark Lord himself, the ones that involved Borgin were of the less painful variety.  They had come to a sort of understanding by the end, a friendship, of sorts, as much of a friendship as can exist between two people who were selling lies for a living. 

It's nice to see him again.

Nice that he never expected her to be anything than the person that was sitting in front of him.

"And what game is that, Borgin?"  She taps her wand on her thigh and sparks come out.  He doesn't flinch.  She's not sure if she wanted him to, if this was part of the game yet or if this was just them making conversation, the same way they would before they squabbled over prices and exchanged veiled threats.  "The war?"

"The game.  The cat and mouse game where you play with your food."  He smiles again and blood shines against his teeth.  Bill had mentioned that he had put up a rather strong fight.  "I have heard stories, but I thought being back with your bloodtraitor friends would have made you lose your taste for it."   She flicks her wrist at the name bloodtraitor and the ropes binding him to the chair tighten, making him wince.  "But apparently not."

"I never had a taste for it.  But I did have an affinity for it.  A certain talent."

"An undeniable talent, some might say."  Borgin smiles at her again.

"And there seems to be a need.  I've been told you've been keeping secrets, Borgin."  She stands, moves closer to the chair.  "The Order doesn't like it when people like you keep secrets."

Borgin has stopped smiling.  "And why do you think that is?"

"Because you have so many."  She presses her wand into his cheek, trails it down over his throat, stops at his pulse point.    He doesn't draw away from her.  "And because secrets like yours tend to make life so difficult for the rest of us."

"I'm an honest man doing honest work." Borgin leans forward, strains forward against the bindings. "And you're not one to throw stones when it comes to secrets, Miss Stanton."

"I always liked you." She doesn't normally say things like this, and is surprised to find that it is the truth. "I thought we had come to an understanding."

"Which is?"

"I ask you for things. And you provide them. And what I want now is information, Mr. Borgin. And if you've heard the stories then you must know," She shrugs, half apologetic. "I always do find out what I need. So wouldn't it be easier for the both of us if you just told me?"

"I've told them before." Borgin snarls, twists against the chair. "I have nothing to tell."

"But Mr. Borgin," She crouches down in front of him. "We both know that that's not true, don't we?"

For the first time, a bit of panic flickers over his face.

"You think I might be frightened of you. Of the things that I've heard that you're willing to do to protect those boys of yours. And maybe I am. But not enough. You're just a child, Miss Stanton." Borgin seems almost sad. "What are you compared to him?"

"But he's not here, Mr. Borgin." She leans in, braces herself against the back of the chair and tilts it backward so he has no choice but to look at her. Her hair falls around her arms, drapes down like a curtain around both their faces, shrouds their shoulders. "And I am. So I'll ask you one last time Mr. Borgin." She lets go of the chair and let's it fall back onto four legs, and distantly in some part of her mind she thinks that they should have gotten rid of the carpet, if they wanted her to do this here. It was such fine carpet. "Are you sure you don't want to reconsider?"

"No." This time, he looks afraid, but he also looks resigned, like this was a forgone conclusion, the end of a long and terrible journey that he had always seen coming. "I don't imagine that I do."  
  


 

  
  


He talks eventually.

He holds out longer than Audra expected him to, mostly because when Audra had walked into his store the first thought had been how weak Borgin seemed, a footstool for better men to use. But he was brave, at the end, when it mattered. He didn't want to scream, and for the most part, he didn't. Didn't want to be the kind of man who begged for his life, and he didn't, but few very rarely do.

Death, though.

It's a lot more likely that they'll ask for that.

Borgin is no exception.

"Please." Whatever restraint he had had was gone, and now Borgin is limp, held upright only by the ropes tying him to the back of his chair, leaning forward as much as he is allowed. He is crying, tears slipping down his face and onto the floor between them, blood spotting his clothes and his skin, but mostly, he is entirely intact.  The pain she causes is not the sort that leaves wounds behind.  "Please, stop, I'll, I'll do anything."

"Just tell me Borgin."  She crouches down in front of him again, curls her hands over his knees.  "Tell me and it can be over.  Tell me and I'll make it stop."

"No."  He stares up at her, head lolling, and spit streams from his open mouth.  "No, The Dark Lord."

"The Dark Lord isn't here.  The Dark Lord would never know.  Tell me, Borgin."  He shakes his head no, hard enough that the chair wobbles.  "Tell me."  She grabs his chin in her hand, forces him to look at her.  "Tell me."

His voice is a whisper, barely more than a breath.  "No."

"That wasn't the answer."  Audra stands, takes a step away from him and then spins back to face it and he flinches, reels back from her, but that cannot stop the spell.  "Crucio!"

He screams, though he isn't aware of it, and Audra tears her eyes away, stares at the wall and blinks tears from her eyes as he twitches and writhes in the chair.  This had gone on for so much longer than she thought it would, and Audra keeps pushing, keeps trying to break him, wondering whether this is a sign of his strength or her weakness. 

"Please."  He stares up at her again, but this time he does not seem to even have the strength to move his head.  "Please just let it end."

"I can't do that.  Only you can do that Borgin.  You have to tell me."  There's a quick slash of her wand and the front of his shirt slashes open, a gash cutting through his skin and blood wells up through the wound.  He cries out, just once, and then falls quiet again, staring down at the blood like he doesn't quite know where it's coming from.  "Can you tell me?"

She holds her wand between them, loosely, lightly, and he stares at it as it wobbles and rolls over the palm of her hand.  Audra spins it through her fingers and he tracks the motion, and then she freezes, jabs the tip of it into his heart.

"Do you know how bad it will hurt?"  She whispers.  "There are different places.  Different ways to center it.  To mold it.  They think that saying the name is the only thing you have to do to make a spell work, but its not.  You have to _feel_ it, to _want_ it, make it twist into something different before it even forms in your mouth.  The spell molds to your suggestion.  That's why they say you need to want it in order to make the unforgivables hurt.  That you need to hate, but you don't.  You just have to want _something._ And in this case, I want to protect my friends.  So do you want to see how bad I can make it hurt?"  Audra leans in closer, and Borgin sobs.  "How bad I _want_ it?"

He doesn't, but she shows him anyways.  
  


 

  
  


It takes an hour and twelve minutes, but it feels so much longer.  When she's done, Bill is waiting for her by the front porch, another cigarette at his fingertips, glowing golden against the dark.  It's the only way she knows he's there.

He doesn't look at her when she comes to stand beside him and doesn't protest when she takes the cigarette from his hands and pulls it to her own mouth.  She flops back onto the stone of the porch and lets her legs dangle over the side, squinting up at his silhouette.  "Is it done?"

Audra doesn't answer, just let's out a stream of smoke.  "These things will kill you, you know."

He had been whispering into his hands, telling whoever it was that it was over, that they could come pick him up.  "They're magic."

"They're muggle."  Audra pushes herself up to a sitting position.  "I saw the box.  Your mother might not know the difference but I do."

"It's one pack."  He rolls his eyes at her and lights another one.  She wonders if he was actually smoking them, if maybe the glow of it was some kind of signal.   "It won't kill me."

"It could."  She levels her wand at him and he stares back at her, silent, challenging, and she wonders another time when they met each other in the darkness, at another moment where she was crossing lines that no one had warned her were there.  "You have a death wish, Bill Weasley?"

He only laughs.  "Do you?"

Audra stays quiet.  "Shouldn't I?"

"No."  He shoves his wand into the side of his boot and Audra catches sight of two other figures apparatting into the darkness.  "You did what you had to.  We all did."

He starts off down the path, and Audra stays, calling after him into the darkness.  "Do you think that makes up for it?"

"No."  She didn't expect him to answer, but he did, spinning around on the gravel pathway, arms spread out wide like wings.  "But I think it lets you live with it."  
  
  


Muriel keeps a closer eye on her than normal, in the days afterward.  And it's nice, being taken care of, having someone make sure she's eating, telling her when to go to bed and when to wake up, drawing her out of herself when Audra can't be bothered to do it on her own. She didn't think Muriel had that kind of nurturing in her, but she supposes everyone does, when the situation requires it.

"That's Gideon. And Fabian. Molly's brothers, you know." Muriel traces one trembling finger over the outlines of their faces. They are in matching suits, bent together, laughing, one holding onto the other for support, the cup in his hand titling towards the ground, the picture taken seconds before it falls, and as she watches, the other twin, Gideon, catches it in mid tumble, placing it back into his brother's hand. "I wasn't surprised at all when I heard the news about Fred and George. Twins run in families, you know."

Audra didn't know.

"And here's my sister. She was so beautiful, at the end. Died young. Died pretty. Wasn't ruined like the rest of us."

The woman really was shockingly pretty. The way she sits in the picture doesn't look like she's liking having her picture taken so much as expecting it, expecting people to want to capture the beauty, and as Audra watches, she turns her head like she's listening to someone just outside the frame of the picture.

Audra's voice was hushed. "Was it the war?"

"No. Disease. Some sort of infection, ate her up from the inside out. It's not something that affects people, anymore. You lot have potions for it. Those newfangled vaccines that the muggles came up with gave us the idea. But it was too late for my sister." The trembling in Muriel's fingers got worse as she spoke. "I really did love her, maybe more than I've loved anyone in my entire life. These, though," She turns the page so viciously that Audra is a bit afraid she is going to rip it, and then Muriel was tapping her finger down onto the faces of a group of people gathered around a wedding cake. "They were from the war. My children. My nieces and nephews. All tangled up in this thing that had nothing to do with them." Her voice cracks and she swallows the sound. "My husband. And I just watched."

"Do you think," She says, and Audra knows she does not want to hear the question, does not want to hear the regrets from this old woman or why she is so bitter, "Do you think it would have been different, if I had helped them?"

"No."  Audra slid the photo album away from Muriel and onto her own lap.  "No, I don't think so.  When the Dark Lord wants something, he gets it.  One more person won't make a difference."

"But you think you can make a difference.   That's why you do what you do."  Muriel tugs the album back.  "Why they let you do all those terrible things."

"It's not like last time."  Audra takes Muriel's shaking hand in her own.  "We're better this time.  More prepared.  More organized.  We know what we're doing."

"Do you?  They thought that, too.  I just thought," She has turned back to Gideon and Fabian, a mirror image of Fred and George, if only a bit older.  "I really did think that it was over, the last time."

"Maybe this'll be it."  For once, the reassurance doesn't feel like a lie.  This will be the end, in one way or another.   "Maybe this will be the last time."

"I doubt it."  Muriel took the photo album and shoved it back into the drawer where she had found it.  "We are all so good at hurting each other."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come find me on Instagram @olive.writes.fanfic


	13. Our Tiny Rebellions

Her father's grip on her arm was painful.

"Merlin."  Audra was knocked back against one of the dusty filing cabinets, her hair hanging down loose from her face.  She had been wearing a mask, but the moment that her father had closed the door and pushed one of the desks up against it, he had turned to her and ripped it off, taking strands of her hair with it.  Now he's just got her by the wrist, looking like he can't decide whether he wants to hold her or break her.  "What are you doing here?"

Audra yanks herself away.  "I came to see you."

_I wanted to make sure that we were safe.  I wanted to make sure that he didn't hurt you for what I did.  I wanted to tell you that I'm sorry that I didn't go with you that day at the train station, that I'm sorry I never had it in me to run away._

"You shouldn't have."  He closes his eyes, just long enough to take in one harsh breath, and when he reaches out to her again, his hand is shaking.   "You shouldn't have come anywhere near here."

"You're the one who dragged me down here."  He had caught sight of her across the room, and broke off from his conversation with the minister to get to her, and Audra wanted to tell him no, that he would have to wait, but part of Audra had become a little girl again who cared about nothing about getting her father to tell her that everything was going to be okay, so she followed him to the elevator like he said, carefully not looking at him until the grate pulled closed and the party disappeared from sight.  "I don't think you could have been more obvious if you tried."

"Don't put this on me," He snarls, and then he rounds on her so that they are face to face, and Audra is surprised to find that she is taller than him.  "Don't pretend that you're not the one who abandoned me, abandoned this family,"

"I didn't abandon you," She shoves at him and he catches at her wrist, throws her back into the counter.  Audra had never remembered her laying a hand on her before.  "I just wanted to protect my friends, there's nothing wrong about that, you made your choice and I made mine, you can't punish me for that!"

"You killed your mother!"  His voice cracks, and Audra remembers what Muriel had said, the one warning.  It wasn't about how reckless it was to be going to a party or about the stupidity about walking into a ministry where there were warrants out for her arrest, but about her father.  _They tell you that love is unconditional,_ she had said, fastening Audra's mask into place so it hid her face from the mouth up.  _But that's not always true, even for fathers.  Especially for fathers.  Not so much mothers._ "Killed your mother,"

"I didn't do that."

"You left her to die."  He had moved across the room, the furthest from her that he could get, and Audra doens't know if it because he is afraid of what he might do to her or if it is because he can't stand the sight of her.  "It came to the same result."

"She was going to kill me.  What kind of mother does that?  What kind of parent?"  Audra takes a step further into the room, into the light, and he cringes away from her.  "Would you have rather it been me?"

"I want it to be you.  I've wanted it to be you ever since Vance died.  Since you _let_ him die.  She said it was awful, but," Audra isn't crying, but her father is, and she knows that it wasn't her that he was crying for.  "But I wanted it to be you instead.  Even before I knew that everything about you was a lie, I wanted it to be you."

They stare at each other across the room- her father in his suit and her in her ruined dress, and Audra is struck by the thought that he really was a mirror image of Vance, and that there was nothing of him in her.  She never did look very much like either of her parents, always her aunt.  Just the shadow of Bellatrix painted all over her face.

"Why did you come here?"  Her father says, after a moment.  "Really."

Audra doesn't have an answer.  She had known that it was idiotic to go from the moment Muriel got the invitation in the mail, inviting her and a guest to the costume party fundraiser that the ministry was throwing in honor of the new minister's time in office, but then she had seen her father's name printed at the bottom with the list of donators and knew that she would be going.

_To make sure that you were safe.  To give you another chance to run away, but this time with me rescuing you._

Instead of answering, Audra pulls on the chain at her neck, forces it into her father's hand.  "You had that made for me when I was seven.  Do you remember what you told me?"  The necklace was goblin made, custom ordered, and it cost more than Audra could probably hope to make in her entire life.  "You told me that family was everything.  That it was the only thing that mattered.  And then you abandoned me."

"You did that-,"

"You _made_ me do that.  Everyone keeps telling me that we all have choices, but I never did.  Join or die, that's what you and mom told me, but I couldn't join you.  You made me into this.   Not The Dark Lord.  Not Fred, not Dumbledore, not me."  Her breath is coming out in sharp bursts.  "You."

"You ruined us."  He's shaking his head, and even though his hair is streaked with gray, it is still the same shade of golden as Vance was, and unwanted the thought comes that she could take care of him right now, could end her entire family in one sweep.  "You ruined this family."

"Is that why you locked me out?"  Audra sags against the counter, and the dust piled up on it smears over her dress.  "Why you shut the doors to the mansion against me?  When they went to find mom, I couldn't open the doors to get in."

There's a drawn out pause where Audra thinks that he has no idea what she's talking about.  Where she thinks he's about to tell her that it was her mother who shut her out of the manor and the family, after all, her mother who took away her right to the Stanton name, but then he's fumbling behind him for the door knob and she knows that it was him.  It's life that makes you bitter, not the end of it.  "You don't deserve that name."  He spits the words at her.  "Not with everything you've done.   Not with Vance."

The door flies open with a bang and Audra chases him out into the hallway.  "I don't deserve it?"  She screams the words after him, and he stands at the elevator with his hands shoved into his pockets, calm and collected, like nothing had ever happened.  Audra had learned to pretend by watching him.  "I'm the only one who deserves it.  The only one who makes it mean something, the only one of whose worth a damn.  Vance knew it, mom knew it, and you're the only one still hanging onto this idea that your way is the best way, still putting on an act."  Fred's words, which were so comforting to hear at the time, were bitter in your mouth.  "Who are you putting on a show for?  Everyone who loved you is either dead or about to be."

He still doesn't move to face her, but he does flinch, just an imperceptible shake of the shoulders.

"Dad," She says, when the elevator doors grind open and he steps inside, and he hesitates, his hand hanging in the air right before he presses the button that would take him away from her.  "Dad, please."

"What, Audra?"  He sounds so tired, worn through.  She had never thought of her parents as old before.  One of them never would be.

"I love you.  I want you to know that.  Even with everything," She swallows, hard, and the other elevator is lighting up, bring people down to them, which means it is time for her to go.  "I'm still your daughter.  I still love you."

The elevator closes.

He never says it back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow guess who's actually being consistent with her updates? 
> 
> come find me on Instagram @olive.writes.fanfic


	14. Hogwarts

The twins bring her news. About the ministry and about the shop, about the Dark Lord and the death eaters and the total lack of information about Harry, Ron, and Hermione. And also about Hogwarts- namely, that Hogwarts isn't Hogwarts anymore.

"They made Snape the headmaster." There's a daily prophet spread over the coffee table, and somewhere back in the kitchen she can hear Muriel puttering around with the dishes, slamming her fine china down on the counter just so the twins knew that she was within ear shot. Fred and George, who have settled down on either side of her on the couch, seem to be making a point to ignore her. "Appointed death eaters, as co defense against the dark arts teachers and some sort of extra security. The rest of them are still there, but there's only so much that they can do."

George makes a sound in the back of his throat, scathing, and when he stands, he accidentally knocks the paper onto the floor. There's an extra loud slam from the kitchen when Muriel hears her china cabinets rattle.

"I can't believe they let it happen." George is pacing the room and every time he turns Audra can catch sight of the missing ear at the side of his head, the skin still red and angry. "What about the parents? How could they let this happen, how could the _ministry_ let this happen? There's got to be some good people left."

Fred stayed silent, but he got up, too, leaving Audra alone on the couch.

"They're scared." She doesn't know if she's trying to be comforting or if she's just running through the lines that she's supposed to say. "They don't want to speak out, don't want to put a target on their backs. They think that their kids are safer as long as they stay in line-,"

"But how could they think that-,"

"Because it's true." Audra knelt on the ground and gathered up the papers, stacking them so all the edges were lined up. She's found that its easier to deal with news like this if she could give herself a task to work through, one that she could do over and over again until it was perfect. She'd scrubbed all of Muriel's antiques spotless. "And the Dark Lord knows it. Parents will do anything to keep their kids safe, no matter how terrible. With the Carrows there, he's got about a thousand hostages without doing any work."

"And you think the kids are just going to sit there and take it?"

George had rounded on her. Audra rises to her feet, almost glad for it- this wasn't her fault, wasn't his fault, but it was so much easier to scream at each other instead of silent. Over at the window, Fred tenses and shakes his head but then turns away from them, too used to things between the two of them boiling over to really try and stop it. Audra and George were too alike to be able to stomach doing nothing at all- fighting, at least, gave them a chance to win at something.

"I think they're going to have to."

"They won't. Remember Umbridge?" George was on the opposite side of the coffee table, and Audra was sure that it was only the distant threat of Aunt Muriel that was keeping the two of them from drawing wands. "Remember everything we did?"

"This isn't Umbridge. Umbridge was nothing-,"

"She had us carve words into our skin!" He grabbed at her arm and forced it into the air, turned it over so the back of her hand was facing the three of them, and for a moment Audra just stood and stared at the words gleaming against her skin, how she had written the sentence over and over- _I must choose where my loyalties lie, I must choose where my loyalties lie_ \- and with every repetition, she had just become more certain that she didn't have a side at all, just a group of people that she would keep safe whatever the cost, no matter the price she had to pay. She just didn't think it could have been such a hard promise to keep to herself. "You're saying that's nothing."

"Nothing compared to him. You don't know- you haven't seen-," Audra's breath was coming out in sharp pants, like her lungs weren't working, like she was sucking in water instead of air and couldn't stop choking on it. The words brought back the memory of all those days in the dungeon- the pads of her fingers scraping over stone as she traced every inch of the room, the stabbing pain that shot up through her shattered ankle every time she took a step, Bellatrix carving words into her skin, launching herself at Pettigrew every time he opened the door, her begging, pleading, threatening, and always having the door be slammed shut in her face. Her on the ground, her being crucioed and her nerves on fire like every cell in her body was being made and unmade in the space of a second, her screaming for her mother while the others laughed, the pangs of hunger that she remembers even now. " _I've_ seen. I've seen things, been through things that you can't even imagine, so you don't know."

The twins are both staring at her. Audra realizes that this was the closest she came to telling them the truth about her days in the dungeon- with the chaos of Dumbledore's death immediately after and then with all the preparations with the wedding and having to find a safe place for her to stay, there had been no good time for her to bring it up. Privately, Audra thinks that maybe she had made up her mind never to tell them, even though it was never really a conscious thought.

Some things are easier to keep to yourself.

"He'll hurt them, is all I'm saying." It takes an effort for her to calm down, and George steps away from her, giving her space to breathe. "And everyone knows it. So now he can do whatever he wants."

It's smart.

It's something that she would have thought of, if the Dark Lord had asked her to and Dumbledore was still there insisting that she had to keep her cover.

She's not entirely confident that it wasn't her idea.

"Ginny's there." Fred's voice startles the both of them and they turn towards the sound to find him with by the window, his hands curled around the edge of the shelf. He's hunched in on himself, and Audra is again struck by how thin he seems. The twins had always been heavier than any of their brothers, what with their broad shoulders and the strength they had gathered from quidditch, but Fred in particular looks sunken in on himself, like he's fading away right in front of her. She wonders if she even would have noticed, had they not gone so long between visits. She wonders what she looks like to him. "She's all alone."

George stepped forward like he was going to comfort him but then held himself back, letting Audra through instead.

"She's not alone." She reaches out a hand, but then lets it fall. There's no map for this. They are too young, and too afraid, and the problems are just too big.

"She's not with us." Fred let's his limbs fall loose and turns to face them, sagging against the window. "That's bad enough, as far as I'm concerned."

"Your sister is one of the strongest women I know." It was empty words, and they both know it. All her strength would do is make her someone the Carrows will want to break. "She's going to be fine."

Fred's breath hitches and he pounds his fist against the window sill just once, and Muriel lets out a screech as all the glassware covering her walls trembles. "No more promises, Audra." He brushes past her, but George stays, staring at her, and she thinks it's that moment that the two of them agree that whatever they might do to fix this, Fred would be left out of it. Fred's voice floats back to her from out in the hallway. "We both know they aren't good for anything."  
  
  


 

 

George stays for a while, and they make a plan. A stupid plan, maybe, but one that McGonagall agrees with.

"If you get caught, I can't protect you." McGonagall is white faced, lips pressed into a thin line, and Audra draws her hood even further around her face. She was sitting caged in against the wall and the bar was too crowded for her to expect any of the muggles to take notice of the quiet table at the back, but there was something about being out in public now that made her jumpy. "It's incredibly stupid."

"Come on, Minerva." George's grin was a little sharper than normal, a bit more feral, and there was something in his voice that suggested that he on edge, but McGonagall smiled all the same. Audra wonders if she was the only one who could hear it. "If anyone can make it through that castle without being seen, it'd be the two of us, wouldn't it?"

McGonagall eyes them over her glasses. "Two of you?"

Audra knows what she's asking, the silent assumption that the gap between them should be filled by Fred. She and George had never discussed bringing his brother into it, and she wasn't about to suggest it now. She didn't know how to explain it if someone had questioned her other than it was the deep rooted need to protect him, a way to shelter him from the truth of things- from the war, from her, from his brother.

"Those kids are going to fight back. I know it, you know it. They don't take orders well, and they won't just sit there and be silent when their friends and family members on the outside are picked off one by one. Remember the DA? Remember every single time that castle came under attack? They will fight, and they will be punished. They'll be punished even if they don't fight." Audra reaches across the table to grab onto McGonagall's hand and is surprised at the trembling of her fingers. She forgets, sometimes, how old she is, how much that strength comes from will and not from brute force. "But I can get them out."

"It doesn't have to be you." The neon lighting threw a blue tint over all of their faces. "You've done so much already."

"The was isn't over." For the second time that week, Audra holds her hand up to the light and McGonagall reads them, her lips shaping the words- _I must choose where my loyalties lie._ "Dumbledore said that I was going to be the last line of defense."

"You're so young. The both of you. All of you." McGonagall's lips trembled, but whatever else she was going to say she swallowed down. "So young."

"There are still people that need to be protected." This time it was George who reached out for her. "Let us protect them."  
  
  


 

 

 

When she tells the plan to Fred, he doesn't protest.

She's not sure why she was expecting him to. He had watched her leave him behind more times than she would have thought one person could take, and she had always come back to him before.

"What are you going to do if you get caught?" He was sitting on the edge of his bed, watching her shrug her way into the leather jacket he had gotten her when the store first started. "If they find you."

Audra reaches up to her neck out of habit, intending to grab onto the locket that she knew was supposed to be there, and then pretended to be zipping up her jacket when she only hit the fabric of her shirt. She had stopped wearing it after that night in the woods when Draco used it to follow her.

"I'll kill them."

"Is this what you do now?" Fred steps up behind her, and together, they did not look anything like the kids they had been when this had first started. "Kill anyone who gets in your way?"

"It's kill or be killed, Fred." She knows that this is why she and George did not include Fred. Mercy is a virtue, but it's also a weakness. "You know that."

"And if you meet Snape?" He said it like it was something that she should be worried about. Maybe it should be. She doesn't know. "What then?"

"I'll kill him, too." She wanted to see him. Wanted to have him come face to face with two people that he had stolen so much from. "And I'm going to make it hurt."

Beside her, Fred flinches. Audra ignores it, moving to the door, and it is only the thought that any day could be the last meeting between the two of them that causes her to turn back around.

"I love you," she says, and isn't sure if it is because she wants to say it or because she is afraid of what will happen between them if she stops.

Fred sighs, and the pause is too long for her to be comforted. "I love you, too," but the words sound a little empty, even to her.


	15. Chapter 15

"We're trying our best."  Seamus voice floats over his shoulder, too busy working with Neville to pry away a tapestry from the wall.  They had glued it over with some sort of potion.  "But there's so many of them and so few of us, and," He turns to her, shrugging, and wipes a hand over his forehead that leaves a streak of ash behind.  "the Dumbledore's Army isn't what it used to be."

There's no Harry, for starters.  No house elves to warn them.  No Clary to hide them.  And no Umbridge to rage against, which, though Voldemort is definitely an enemy, he's an entirely different breed.  It is one thing to fight against a school administrator when you only have justified rage and the fear of her blood quill, it is quite another when crossing a line could mean having yourself put under the wand, or your families names added to the list of missing witches and wizards.

The stakes are higher.

"We know."  George's voice is bracing, and when he puts his hand on Seamus' shoulder, he sags against the weight of it.  "We're going to help from here on out."

They had gotten their first letter from McGonagall the night before, about a girl whose parents don't seem to be cowed by the recent postings of death eaters in the school.  Outside the walls, her parents are still speaking out, her mom shouting down from a podium, and inside the walls, she had been spirited out of bed in the middle of the night with Ginny's hand pressed over her mouth and moved from dank dungeons to spider strewn broom cupboards until she got stuck behind this tapestry to wait for Audra and George to show up.

"This is Maggie," Seamus says, when he finally gets the tapestry pulled away, and a little girl darts out to wrap her hands around his waist.  "She's been very brave for us."

He sinks down to his knees in front of her, murmuring something in her ear about _friends_ and _going to take you somewhere safe,_ but all Audra can think about is how small she was.  She's got eyes that are too big for her face and a bruise that has turned her lip black, a bony wrist that was holding the threadbare remains of a friendship bracelet in Hufflepuff colors. 

Her robes are too big for her, and they make her trip when she turns to them.

"We're going to take you away from here."  George does the talking.  he's much better at being soothing than Audra.  "Somewhere near the ocean."  He reaches out a hand for her to take and she shies away from him.  "Do you like the beach?"

There were two locations.  For people connected to the Order, in the case of this girl, it would be either Aunt Muriel's or Bill's cottage.  For people who just needed to hide until the war was out, they wait with Damien until a suitable location can be found.

Maggie nods, and George smiles, and she takes his hand, and its the first time all night Audra lets out a breath.  They didn't really know what to do if this girl had refused to go with them.

"Hey."  Seamus grabs at her arm when she turns to go, and Audra stiffens.  They were not supposed to wait- grab the girl, and they all go in their opposite directions.  Down the hall, George pauses, the girl clinging to his arm.  "Have you heard anything about Dean?"

Audra stops, shifts her weight.

"I heard he ran.  I-," Her voice breaks, and she reaches out to him, grabs his hand and clings on tight.  "I'm sure he's okay.  If I hear anything-,"

"If you hear anything it won't be good news."  He's shaking his head when he finally looks at her, the words followed by a short burst of self deprecating laughter, and there are tears in his eyes.  "It's better that I don't know."

"But if I do."  Her hand twitches and he let's go.  "I'll tell you."

She wants to say more, but he only nods, a jerky motion, and then he turns to go, down the hallway with his hands in the pockets, and he does not look like someone who had just committed a crime that would get him killed.  He looks like he thinks that he could take what comes, no matter how bad it is.  That he might welcome the hurt.

That he'd like to see someone try, if they wanted to hurt him.

Audra can relate.

"Audra?"  George's voice, pulled calm with no small amount of effort.  She can recognize the strain, the sharpness of it.  "You ready?"

"Yeah."  She pulls her eyes away from Seamus, away from the reminder of everyone else who is missing the people they love.  Away from the reminder of what Fred must have looked like, during all their time apart.  "Coming."

 

 

 

 

The Carrows try to stop them, once they figure out what's happening.

The House dormitories get raided, over and over.  Known members of the D.A. are rounded up and screamed at, and when people slip away in the night, they take their friends and grab them by the shoulders and toss them around like they aren't really children at all, and no one ever says a word.

They shore up tunnels.  Interrogate the staff, try and compel the house elves to speak, set tighter curfews, raise the punishments.

And yet the kids keep disappearing.

"What are we going to do if they find this one?"  They are crawling their way through the tunnel underneath from the Shrieking Shack to the Whomping Willow, George ahead of her.  "I think it's the only one left."

George is the expert on hidden tunnels.  McGonagall sends them the updates on the new security measures weekly, and one by one, the ways in are starting to disappear.

"We storm the gates, I guess."  For a moment, that vision rises up, what would happen if she and George and other members of the Order led a full on assault on Hogwarts, and the kids would spill out on the front lawn, and they would all go home. And Voldemort wouldn't have any hostages.  "But I doubt they find this one.  No one knows about it but us."

"Snape does."  The idea makes her go still.  "Ron's third year.  Remember?"

They both stop moving.  They're right at the halfway mark, a little bend where McGongall leaves directions or notes about the plans changing.  There's nothing tonight.

"It's been weeks."  The idea of it makes fear spread sour over her tongue.  "He probably thinks we can't get through the whomping willow."

( _George is an Animagus.  He had told her not to worry about how they were going to get past the willow, and she had screamed the first time he had transformed into the little Magpie.  His solution turned out to just be throwing himself at the little knot that makes the tree go still.  He always walks away like he's been struck over the head afterwards._ )

"But he knows."  

"He must not remember.  Or must think it's inside job only.  If he knew," If he knew they would have been dead.  If he knew she would be at the Dark Lord's feet right about now.  "He would have stopped us a long time ago."

George stares.  "It doesn't matter, really."  He shrugs and starts moving again.  "We're going to do it anyways."

Audra sits for a moment after, and then follows him, because he's right.  What does it matter, really, if one of these nights Snape would be waiting for them out on the Hogwarts lawn?  She's looking forward to it.

 

 

 

 

They'd been doing this for a few weeks when they finally see Ginny.

"George?"  There's a boy towering over her shoulder, glowering at both of them, seeming to act as her protector even though he was the one being snuck out of the building.  "Is that you?"

Audra wants to tell them that they're being too loud, but the urge gets lost when Ginny starts running, sprinting through the dungeon hallway to get to her brother.  George catches her and the force of it knocks him backwards into the wall, but it doesn't phase him, and within a moment he's got her by the waist and spinning her around the room.

"Are you alright?"  He has her face in his hands, his thumb brushing over a line of split skin right underneath her eye.  She bats his hands away.  "Did they hurt you?"

He knows they have.  Audra knows- can see the bruise creeping out of the collar of her shirt, the way her fingers are fumbling like they don't work quite right, the livid red burn around her wrists.  

( _They whip the kids, now, just like Filch had wanted to do with Fred and George.  He had been excited with that order, then.  She wonders if this is what he thought it would end up looking like.  She wonders if he's still excited when he looks at what he's done._ )

"No."  Ginny is so much stronger than her brothers.   She breaks away first, turning to the boy behind her, and its with a shock that Audra finds herself face to face with Blaise Zabini.  "No, they don't hurt me."  

"Him?"  Audra's lip curls.  "This is who we're risking our necks for?"

George has gone still.  Ginny glares at her.

"He did us a favor."  As far as Draco's friends go, Blaise isn't that bad, but he's still not the best of them.  Not that all Slytherins are willing to take the death eaters side, but she knows very well the pressures that family can bring.  Enough pressure to make someone tell exactly how the people who keep stealing children out from Snape's noses are able to get into the castle.  "We don't let the people who help us get hurt."

"You've been hurt."  The look on George's face is ugly, and Audra is reminded with a stomach turning wrench to the gut, that he is so much more like her than Fred ever will be.  So much more ready to do what needs to be done.  "Why shouldn't he take a turn?"

"He saved us."  Ginny reaches over to him and their hands twist together.  "A lot of us, when he didn't have to.  Do you understand?"

Audra does and she doesn't.  She wants to help him, but if he leaves, he goes back to his mother, to the mansion she got from the five husbands that had died in mysterious ways and the pile of gold that would let him flee the war before he paid any price for it.

"He can tell them where we are.  He can get into the room."  Room being the room of requirement.  Ginny's voice is a hiss now, her voice low and snapping, and Zabini is staring at the wall, as if determined not to hear any of it.  "They can't find him again."

"I've been waiting for you for a while," He breaks in, and his voice is like gravel, and also like he hasn't used it for a while.  "They wouldn't let me go back once I helped them."

George stares from Blaise to his sister, and Ginny rolls her eyes, breaking away from her brother to shove Blaise between the shoulder blades.  He moves at the suggestion, and while this probably wasn't his choice, he doesn't seem any more upset with leaving than he had seemed when he was doing anything else.

"I said we were grateful."  Ginny's hands are shaking, and she reaches up to snap the buttons closed on his cloak.  Blaise is looking at her in a way that makes Audra glad Harry isn't here.  "But I also said we don't trust you."

He laughs at the we, and none of them move for a moment.  He is the first to leave the room, and Ginny exhales when he does, pressing the heels of her palms down into her eyes.  For a moment, both Audra and George are frozen between the urge to comfort her and the need to follow Blaise, but then she drops her hands and smiles at them.  It's a trembling thing, but then she sucks in a shuddering breath and the moment passes, leaving the two of them to exchange glances as Ginny shoulders her way out of the room.

"When you get out of the shack," Ginny says, and presses a little vial into Audra's palm.  "Make him drink.  He won't want to, but," And her jaw is set, and she has never looked so much like her brothers.  "It'll be better for everyone if he forgets."

Audra doesn't ask how much.

It doesn't really matter.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> slowly but surely plodding along with this... but anyways I've had a good summer and hope you guys (the two of you reading this) have too. If you want to see pics from my Niagara falls vacation they're up on my Instagram (olive.writes.fanfic)

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on Instagram @olive.writes.fanfic


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